No Longer Empty honors artist Derek Fordjour during its Connectivity Ball!

Painter extraordinaire, Derek Fordjour is a New York-based artist of Ghanaian heritage, whose richly accumulated surfaces break down the illusionistic experience of America(n).  Mainly working in everyday, pedestrian materials – from cardboard to newsprint to coal dust – he transforms these humble elements into something spectacular, worthy of the investment of looking. In the same way, the multiple layers that make up any given surface of his work suggests that one must mine for meaning: the face of the $bill cannot be taken for currency.  Look again these works say; see beneath the spectacle, the stereotype, the overlooked, the phantom of your imagination. For it is there that meaning, even richness begins.

Join us to honor Derek Fordjour on April 3 and purchase your tickets here!

Derek Fordjour (b. 1974, Memphis, TN) is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University, and an MFA in painting at Hunter College. His work has been exhibited in numerous venues including The Whitney Museum, Sugarhill Museum, Harlem and BAM in Brooklyn. In September 2018, the Whitney Museum in partnership with TF Cornerstone and The High Line presented a public billboard installation by the artist as part of it’s Whitney Billboard Project. Fordjour was commissioned by the the New York City MTA to create a series of permanent mosaic installations at 145th Street Station on the Lenox Avenue line, which were installed in November 2018. Fordjour’s other awards include the 2018 Deustche Bank NYFA Fellow Award, the 2017 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in New York City and the 2016 Sugarhill Museum Artist-in-Residence organized by No Longer Empty. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic and ARTnews. He was appointed Critic at Yale University University School of Art in 2018. His work also appears in several collections throughout the US and Europe including JP Morgan Chase collection and Dallas Museum of Art. He lives and works in New York.

Image:

Derek Fordjour in his studio.
Photography Brad Ogbonna.