I DO NOT COME TO YOU BY CHANCE – AMOAKO BOAFO EXHIBITION REVIEW

Amidst Tulips 2025. copyright Amoako Boafo. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

GAGOSIAN: 10 APRIL – 24 MAY 2025, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London

“I make paintings that allow me to celebrate where I come from and what I aspire to be, while sharing unique perspectives and understanding.” —Amoako Boafo

I Do Not Come To You By Chance is the debut solo exhibition at the Gasogian in the capital by Amoako Boafo – a Ghanaian artist who reimagines portraiture with a collection of striking images housed within an installation based on his own childhood home in Accra.

Curiosity is perked upon arrival by an entrance encased entirely in wallpaper, perhaps giving a small clue to the artist’s modest environment of the late eighties and early nineties. Boafo’s upbringing saw challenges - his father tragically passing away when he was a boy, his mother keeping the household together working as a cook. This intriguing opening presentation then unfolds into a full wooden-framed courtyard (created in tandem with DeRoche Projects), a structure carefully based upon the dimensions of the home in which Boafo grew up. Now, we find ourselves within the space where the artist learned to share space and gain knowledge – and immersed in his works themselves. These vast canvases depict the faces and bodies of Boafo himself and those about him, as they worked, relaxed and simply expressed themselves in his space. The artist’s personal heritage is obviously highly important to him: “My success has, hopefully, allowed me to impact the lives of others in my community.”

Boafo’s technique is fascinating: each image is stark in its use of contrast, while textural ridges within the subject’s flesh are created by the artist’s fingers, their line seeming to caress the contour of each body, always emphasising its individual strength. The wallpaper then makes its return, offering a contrasting material quality to the expanses of white that often represent the subject’s clothing.

These are extraordinary images that confront stereotyping within black art, while appearing before us as both formidable in their execution, yet highly personal in their subject matter. Beneath the clear and obvious power of Boafo’s tableaux lies an unexpected spirit and playfulness. We find the artist confidently posing on his bicycle (the title of which, Black Cycle, clearly nods to his broader artistic intention), or – in Self Portrait with Cacti, a remarkable piece that takes up over thirteen feet of wall space – resting nonchalantly in his bedroom among a variety of houseplants.

Amoako Boafo’s name is of course already one to be reckoned with: as well as having exhibited internationally on planet Earth, the forty-year-old has notably seen his work launched into space via the fuselage of Jeff Bezos’s rocket. Where Boafo once sold paintings for under £100, he can now record sales in excess of £2m. While I Do Not Come To You By Chance will clearly draw even greater attention, it is already unarguable that the sky is far from the limit for Amoako Boafo.