LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE - A SPACE BETWEEN PAUSE AND PLAY.
‘Fly In League With The Night’ Tate Britain LONDON.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘A Bounty Left Unpaid’ 2011.
The first image I ever saw made by the artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was of a striding figure, wearing the embodiment of elegance - a white shirt, tucked into lean black trousers and worn with what I imagined to be soft suede dance shoes - this picture has since I first saw it epitomised everything I love about portraiture - a sense of the subject - an image which proposes more questions than answers - Like Henry Raeburn’s ‘The Skating Minister’, who seems to share a silhouette with Yiadom-Boakyes striding figure, both step out into a landscape of what appears to be water and yet are moments frozen in a state of motion - permanent in paint - ephemeral in action.
Arriving at this exhibition - directly after seeing the Cézanne retrospective, the parallels between the work of both artists quickly felt pertinent. In media they share the use of oil paint on canvas of course, aesthetically both apply pigment thickly, with impulsive brushstrokes - tenderly capturing the soul of their subjects - and as colourists both share a love for dazzling and emotive combinations, with expanses of shades which draw breath.
Learning that Yiadom-Boakye’s preliminary process involves found images instead of painting directly from life - a self-made reality collaged - adds to the sense of enigma that this show presents. The paintings' titles are equally fascinating - like tracks of an album whose lyrics inspire philosophical unravelling and personal loyalties like anthems learnt during privately pivotal times of change. Music in fact was in the air and in the paintings - with a specific playlist of tracks chosen by the artist - heard at the show's conclusion - an amazing sense of sound caught up within the brush strokes seemed palpable and metaphysical, like grains of sand found in Monet sea scapes - so I imagine notes to be embedded within Yiadom-Boakye’s canvas.
The portraits of dancers further evidence a metamorphic state of rhythm. Life moments on record, like camcorder movies paused, waiting to be played by a viewer boiling water or answering the landline - so are the paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - domestic moments mirrored in canvas - palpably poised - the intake and exhale of breath as tea is sipped and advice offered. A cross-reference is irresistible to Carrie Mae Weems 1990 ‘Kitchen table series’ - private and intimate frames with extraordinary confessional qualities.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘Penny For Them’ 2014.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘Few Reasons Left To Like You’ 2020.
As within television or classical portraiture, the use of the fourth wall - where the subject directly looks out into the audiences gaze is fascinating - particularly so within ‘few reasons left to like you’ - the reflected surface of the table which repeats the subjects folded arms and that stare, mysterious yet familiar seems somehow to offers a mirror to the viewer. Similarly, a direct stare is seen within the exhibition poster - a young child looking out from a background of green, with eyes which feel too young to be filled with such sadness or is that just the viewer's interpretation of their own reflected self?
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘A Passion Like No Other’ 2012.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Fly In The League With The Night - Tate Britain, London - Until 26 February 2023.
Special Thanks: Anna Overden