Artists

Michael Armitage

Press release

Curated by Jean-Marie Gallais, curator, Pinault Collection, in collaboration with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, art director, Serpentine Galleries, for the catalogue, and Caroline Bourgeois, advisor, Pinault Collection, and Michelle Mlati, art historian 

At Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection brings together an exceptional group of works by Kenyan-born painter Michael Armitage (born in 1984), created over the past ten years. Here, references to East Africa blend with mythology and Western art history in dense, flamboyant compositions, often monumental in scale. Some works address sensitive subjects from Kenya's recent history. The exhibition, which includes large-format paintings and drawings, is structured around themes that run through Armitage's practice, such as the expression of politics in individual and collective narratives, mythology and sexuality, and migration issues. At the Palazzo Grassi, Michael Armitage presents a comprehensive overview of his practice, interweaving personal memory, collective history and symbolic imagination to give free rein to visions and landscapes that are both inhabited and hallucinatory.