JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 photographic works, framed in light/dark/white wood and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the smaller project gallery. (Installation shots below.)

The following works are included in the show:

• 4 archival pigment prints, 2024, 2025, sized roughly 42×32, 44×33 inches, in editions of 4+2AP
• 3 multilayered archival pigment prints, 2024, sized roughly 56×47, 58×53, 61×54 inches, unique
• 5 archival pigment prints, 2017, sized roughly 51×41 inches, in editions of 3+2AP

A monograph of Alekhuogie’s work has recently been published by Aperture (here). Hardcover, 8.6×11.1 inches, 156 pages, with 110 image reproductions. Includes essays by Wills Glasspiegel, Wendy A. Grossman, and Zoë Hopkins. (Cover shot below.)

Comments/Context: David Alekhuogie is starting to build some noticeable artistic momentum. Following up on his 2021 show (reviewed here) at Yancey Richardson, this new selection of works smartly extends and synthesizes some of the themes he’s been exploring, and backfills with an earlier project to fill out some of his artistic history. With a BFA from SAIC and and MFA from Yale already in his backpack, and a first monograph from Aperture released earlier this summer (linked above), Alekhuogie is methodically assembling the pieces that provide the foundation for a durable photographic career.

For the past few years, Alekhuogie has been wrestling with archival imagery of African art, as found in vintage magazines, catalogs, and in particular as documented by Walker Evans. Back in 1935, Evans was commissioned by MoMA to photograph hundreds of African sculptures for an exhibition titled African Negro Art. Isolated against black grey and white backdrops and closely cropped, the statues and masks were taken out of context and closely observed (and classified) by Evans, amplifying their formal qualities. The Evans photographs then led Alekhuogie to a broader study of how African art has been historically seen and presented by Western eyes more generally, and the downstream influences those interpretations, appropriations, and critiques have had on black aesthetics.

Alekhuogie’s first efforts at remixing this imagery (in an ongoing project fittingly called “A Reprise”) took the form of making paper facsimiles of Evans’s images and placing them on cardboard backing, which he then re-imagined as three dimensional sculptures. These were then set against a variety of studio-based backdrops, including boldly patterned African textiles, original catalog pages, and loosely painted canvas, and rephotographed, creating layers of repetitions and associations. What was most intriguing about these initial efforts was how Alekhuogie altered the original spatial dynamics and activated the underlying works, turning previously flat visual documents into three-dimensional objects that cast shadows and had a definite sense of presence, bringing them back to life.

Alekhuogie’s newest additions to the project continue with this same general formula, but have pushed forward with more complexity and sophistication. Two works (“Mother Country Masque 1” and “Portrait of a young Benin head”) add an almost Cubist multi-perspective structure to his clamped constructions, with facets of the original sculptures repeated, folded, and set on edge, seemingly mutating and reassembling before our eyes. “Pan-American Gothic” takes a similar approach, but places the multiplying, multi-angled head against the resonant backdrop of the American flag, with a wry nod to Grand Wood. And another work juxtaposes a bust of Nefertiti with an image of Elisabeth Taylor as Cleopatra (from the 1963 film), intermingling their faces with confused replication and forcing different interpretations of Egyptian culture (and race) to uneasily coexist.

Three other works add an element of sculptural stacking to the mix, with two framed images stacked off kilter on top of one another, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Brendan Fowler’s stacked works. The top image in each work is one of Alekhuogie’s reinterpreted sculptures, in some cases the paper facets set perpendicular to each other to add to their free standing three dimensionality; one moves even further away from the appropriated imagery to employ a hand drawn approximation. Mixed African fabrics provide the backdrops, with one pedestal made from stacked books on black history and another made from packing boxes. The underneath images bring back catalog and book pages featuring the same works, creating a doubling effect with the compositions on top. In all three works, there is a deliberate sense of building or piling, of ideas resting on ideas that came before, with those cultural and aesthetic relationships now being unpacked and interrogated by Alekhuogie.

Off in the side room, we get a glimpse back at an earlier project, where Alekhuogie transforms the baggy pants (often without belts) worn by young black men into an exercise in abstraction. In each image, he has cropped a waist-level view down to just layers of fabric, where sweatshirts, t-shirts, shorts, underwear, and pants become stacked stripes of bold textural color. These are straightforward but disarmingly clever compositions, with one mistier orange atop orange multiple exposure setup recalling the hovering colors of Mark Rothko. More importantly, they turn the swagger of black masculine fashion into a repeated pattern.

Both of these projects are rooted in a conceptual framework of reclaiming black cultural narratives, particularly those based on specific notions of the past, often set by others. His newest works are a step forward in synthesis, where the original ideas have had time to steep a bit and have since evolved into something richer and more nuanced than before. With several strong standout works in this recent batch, Alekhuogie is clearly gathering aesthetic steam.

Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced at $8500, $11000, or $15000 each, based on size and project. Alekhuogie’s work has little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.