Without question, Art Basel Miami has become the most influential art explosion in America. With 267 galleries from 31 countries exhibiting an estimated three billion dollars worth of contemporary art, the December art affair has become the place to be for gallery owners, collectors, and curators who descend upon Miami Beach to capture the new trends in art.
This year prolific scholar and visual artist, Fahamu Pecou will present his much talked about collection from December 3-5 at the Lyons Wier Gallery during the “Pulse” art fair. He will be available for a meet and greet from 3-5pm on Saturday, December 5 at Booth N-107, Indian Beach Park, 4601 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.
In the past two years Pecou has become our modern day Andy Warhol, depicting scenes of everyday Black life in a manner that hasn’t been captured before. Pecou’s infusion of Hip-Hop and art creates a new perspective in contemporary art. Pecou’s focus is surrounded by his concern of contemporary representations of Black masculinity and how these images impact both the reading and performance of it.
While Paul Gauguin gave us a glimpse of culture with doses of Blackness, Pecou gives us a surplus of culture in its entirety with no apologies. His remarkable paintings that satirize stereotypes and critique the one dimensional perspective of Black men forced upon us by the media have been impressively acquired by the Smithsonian Institute. In addition, Pecou’s art has been featured on the walls of Cookie and Luscious Lyons’ home on Empire as well as on ABC’s hit series, Blackish.
“I began my career experimenting with the branding strategies employed in Hip-Hop music and entertainment,” says Pecou. “These experiments ultimately led me to question not only the stereotypes engendered by the commodification of Hip-Hop culture, but more, to consider how the influence of historic and social configurations of race, class and gender impact and inform these representations.”
Pecou continues to bring his art to the streets, recently commissioned to paint murals on Atlanta’s Marta stations. Pecou hosts a quarterly art meets Hip-Hop event in Atlanta called “InterSessions,” which has featured T.I., Nzinga Stewart and stic.man from dead prez as guests. For more info, visit http://www.fahamupecouart.com.
-Abesi Manyando (@abesipr)
