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Every9man

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Oct 4, 1999, 3:00:00 AM10/4/99

Hi
Here's a short bio of Ofili. Apparently he ~is~ a church going Catholic:)

I think it's interesting that his unconventional approach to art is somehow
interpreted as offensive because I do not believe that was his intention.

Barbara

September 28, 1999

Chris Ofili: British Artist Holds Fast to His Inspiration

By CAROL VOGEL

hris Ofili is hunkered down in his central London studio, screening the
avalanche of phone calls he has been getting for the last few days and
trying not to obsess about the uproar over "The Holy Virgin Mary," his
1996 painting of a black Madonna with a clump of elephant dung on one
breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the
background.
Eamonn McCabe The London artist Chris Ofili , the London artist, says
the excitement in New York over his painting ``The Holy Virgin Mary''
``seems very distant.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It all seems very distant and confusing to me," Ofili said. "It's like
a play, and somehow I got mentioned in the script. I think there's some
bigger agenda here."

His painting is part of "Sensation: Young British Artists From the
Saatchi Collection," scheduled to open at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on
Saturday. When Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani threatened to cut off the
museum's city subsidy and remove its board if the show was not canceled,
he singled out "The Holy Virgin Mary," along with several other works,
as "sick stuff."

John Cardinal O'Connor called the show an attack on religion itself. The
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said it found Ofili's
painting offensive, too. After seeing a photograph of "The Holy Virgin
Mary" in the exhibition's catalogue, the league's president, William A.
Donohue, issued a statement saying people should picket the museum.

Asked yesterday to explain his "Holy Virgin Mary," Ofili said in a
telephone interview: "I don't feel as though I have to defend it. The
people who are attacking this painting are attacking their own
interpretation, not mine. You never know what's going to offend people,
and I don't feel it's my place to say any more."

In interviews since he won the Turner Prize for young British artists
last year, Ofili spoke broadly about his unconventional approach to art,
including his use of elephant dung and his Roman Catholic upbringing.

The British-born artist talked about his African heritage, which led him
to visit Zimbabwe, where he was disturbed by the remnants of colonialism
he encountered and was moved by the beauty of the land and its wildlife,
he said.

From the ``Sensation'' exhibition catalogue, Thames & Hudson, 1997 ``The
Holy Virgin Mary,'' a painting by Chris Ofili, is part of the
"Sensation" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

While Ofili's painting is the one most frequently mentioned in criticism
of the Brooklyn show, other works that have drawn fire also use organic
materials, including a shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, a bust
of a man made from his own frozen blood and a folded-over mattress with
a water bucket, melons and a cucumber standing between a pair of
oranges.

This isn't the first time that Ofili, 31, has found himself in the
center of a hailstorm. After he won the Turner Prize, the $32,000 award
given annually by the Tate Gallery of Art in London, several London
critics denounced the choice as gimmicky and dubbed Ofili the Elephant
Man.

But he said that this time he felt besieged by the public outcry because
he and his work had been singled out.

Ofili, who has a master's degree from the Royal College of Art in
London, is widely known in the art world, and his work is in the
permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate
Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

Elephant dung, which has become something of a signature in Ofili's
paintings, is in large part a cultural reference to his African
heritage, he said. Although he was born in Manchester, both his parents
were born in Lagos, Nigeria, and their first language was Yoruba. (His
parents are now divorced, Ofili said.

Both work in biscuit factories, his mother in Manchester and his father
in Nigeria.)

He describes himself as a churchgoing Catholic, although he does not
attend every Sunday. Ofili went to state schools in Manchester and
became interested in furniture design before gravitating to art.

When he was 24 he decided to learn more about his roots. He won a
scholarship to travel and paint for eight weeks in Zimbabwe.

"I was struck by the beauty of the landscape and of the animals in their
natural surroundings," he said. "When a giraffe taller than the average
house in Britain would walk by, it gave me that particular feeling of
being shocked and simultaneously finding something beautiful. It gave me
an excitement and a fear of the new."
BROOKLYN MUSEUM'S CONTROVERSIAL ART EXHIBIT

Recent Coverage
彦irst Lady Assails Mayor Over Threat to Museum (Sept. 28, 1999)
稗rooklyn Museum Official Discussed Removing an Offending Work (Sept.
28, 1999)
膝iuliani's Threats Make Exhibition a Hot Topic (Sept. 27, 1999))
桧n Display at City Hall, 2 Catholics, 2 Views (Sept. 25, 1999)
百eeking Buzz, Museum Chief Hears a Roar Instead (Sept. 25, 1999)
膝iuliani Threatens to Evict Museum Over Art Exhibit (Sept. 24, 1999)
匹ritic's Notebook: Cutting Through Cynicism in Art Furor (Sept. 24,
1999)
膝iuliani Vows to Cut Subsidy Over Art He Calls Offensive (Sept. 23,
1999)

Forum
弼oin a Discussion on Mayor Giuliani and New York City Politics

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Zimbabwe, he said, he was aware of its colonial past. There were
still signs calling the nation Rhodesia, he said, and he encountered
colonialist behavior among some of the people there, both black and
white.

His use of elephant dung, which he gets from the London Zoo, is in many
ways a reaction to what he saw and felt in Africa, he said.

"There's something incredibly simple but incredibly basic about it,"
Ofili said. "It attracts a multiple of meanings and interpretations."

While news reports have described his paintings as being splattered with
dung, the clumps are actually carefully placed on each canvas. In one
painting a clump of dung is a jeweled brooch encrusted with gold
sparkles on a goddess; in another it is an abstract element floating in
a densely painted background. In yet another five balls of dung descend
in a line, each with a letter formed from colored pins spelling out the
name Rodin. Many of the works rest on two large clumps of dung, which
act almost as feet.

"It's a way of raising the paintings up from the ground and giving them
a feeling that they've come from the earth rather than simply being hung
on a wall," he said.

Most of Ofili's works are vibrantly colored and use multiple layers of
dots (inspired, he said, by images from ancient caves in Zimbabwe).

He frequently uses cutouts of circles reminiscent of 1960's Op Art or of
triangles, based on a set of etchings he made while visiting New York.

His oil paintings often include images cut from magazines,
comic-book-like characters and splashes of translucent resin.

While he has detractors, the Victoria Miro Gallery on Cork Street in
London and Gavin Brown Enterprises in Manhattan, the two galleries that
represent him, report they have waiting lists for collectors demanding
his work. One painting sold last year for $36,052 at Christie's in
London.

"I was an underbidder on some of those paintings at Christie's," said
Dean Valentine, president and chairman of UPN Network and a collector.

"Of all the young British painters I think he's by far the best. The
paintings have a depth of expression. He has something to say."

Valentine admitted that at first the elephant dung did give off an
unpleasant odor. "It took some work to air it out," he said. "He's not
trying to offend but to make you think."

Gavin Brown, who first showed Ofili's work in 1995, said he believed the
uproar at the Brooklyn Museum "doesn't bear any relation to his art."

"Paintings aren't offensive," Brown added. "They don't kill people."

This fall is to be a big moment for Ofili in the United States. He has
been chosen as one of the 41 artists whose work will be shown in the
Carnegie International, a survey of contemporary art that opens at the
Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh on Nov. 6.

On Oct. 16 Brown is mounting a second show of Ofili's work, five new
paintings that are to together being called "Afrobiotics."

Ofili said he was concerned about his notoriety.

"I find it off-putting that people judge you before they know you," he
said.

While he liked being included in "Sensation," he said he worried about
being seen as one of the Young British Artists and not as an individual.

"People see me as part of a package," he said. "It scares me."

During an interview in his London studio in August, Ofili worked on two
paintings at once. The larger of the two was of a character he calls
"magic monkey" holding up an empty turquoise vessel.

He said the monkey was trying to capture the three powerful elements of
life: sex, money and drugs, which are represented by three separate
clumps of elephant dung bearing the three words formed out of straight
pins with colored tops that he buys at his local grocery store.

The painting's surface was thick with beads of paint applied with a thin
stick that is actually a brush that has no hairs on it. Using the kinds
of aluminum containers that Chinese takeout food comes in, Ofili mixed
the paint to a consistency he described as cream. He spread layer upon
layer of glitter, besides the painted dots. On top of that he applied
coats of translucent resin to give the surface a transparency.

"That's to make it seem that in some ways it's more imagined than real,"
he said.

Across the room was another painting, its background three-quarters
finished.

Ofili applied large black and white spirals with a thin brush.

"I think I roughly know what I'm doing," he said, moving from the magic
monkey to the black spirals.

"It might be a female portrait.

I need a princesslike figure."

He likened the process to writing a song. "You know the lyrics," he
said.

"Then you want to get the right rhythm and base line."

Outside the entrance to his London studio that day, several teen-agers
huddled together smoking crack. Above their heads was a sign warning,
"This area is being constantly watched and patrolled by the Lord."

Ofili said he made the sign because he wanted the addicts who regularly
used his doorway to think about what they were doing.

"I was brought up a Catholic and was an altar boy," he said.

"I believe in God, but I'm not dominated by it.

We all studied math, but we don't go around spewing numbers. Religion
should be used in the appropriate way."

"The church is not made up of one person but a whole congregation, and
they should be able to interact with art without being told what to
think," he continued.

"This is all about control," he added. "We've seen it before in history.
Sadly, I thought we'd moved on."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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