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Friedman Benda is pleased to announce Titus Kaphar’s The Vesper Project. The exhibition is a
massive sculptural statement—an encompassing installation, in which Kaphar’s own work is
seamlessly woven into the walls of a 19th-century American house.
The culmination of an intense five-year engagement with the lost storylines of the Vesper family,
the project was “birthed in a state of extended disbelief,” according to Kaphar. As the artist’s
muses, the members of the Vesper family and their histories are intertwined with Kaphar’s
autobiographical details, and layered with wide-based cultural triggers of identity and truth in the
context of historical accounting.
In The Vesper Project, period architecture, gilt frames, a vintage typewriter, a neglected wardrobe,
and old photographs act as seemingly recognizable elements, but by employing every tool of his
trade, Kaphar insinuates doubt and transports the viewer into a disrupted mental state. As the
house fractures, so does the viewer’s experience. In so doing, Kaphar compresses times,
conflates the continuum of history and postulates new powerful realities.
With many of Kaphar's interventions present in the installation including slashing, silhouetting,
and whitewashing, this singular work is a complex map of overlapping timetables and collective
genealogies. By obliterating the distance between the viewer and the work, The Vesper Project is
comprehensive, experiential, and it is the artist’s most ambitious expression to date.
Titus Kaphar graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University. In 2006, he
served as the Artist in Residence at The Studio Museum, Harlem. In 2009, he received the
inaugural Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize from the Seattle Museum of Art for his
exhibition History in the Making. His work has been displayed recently in Berlin, Los Angeles, and
Tel Aviv and is currently on view at the Savannah College of Design. This will be his second
exhibition at Friedman Benda, after 2011’s Classical Disruption.
For more information, please contact:
Jennifer Olshin, Director, jennifer@friedmanbenda.com, (212) 239-8700
Alice Higgins, Associate Director, alice@friedmanbenda.com, (212) 239-8700
www.friedmanbenda.com
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