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The Hole is proud to announce our first solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist Kpe Innocent. Ten new square paintings sprout for spring and warm up our Tribeca gallery with ochre and burnt sienna, dusty reds and rusty oranges.

A self-taught artist working in the Greater Accra Region, Innocent has just begun to exhibit work in the past two years. Educated in journalism, Innocent was drawn to the Bauhaus movement and a minimalist aesthetic from the very beginning. He likes focusing on form and architecture with directness and straightforwardness, inspired by greats like Hockney and Hopper as well as contemporaries like Geoff McFetridge. A few pop culture references creep into Innocent’s work—flip flops or Nike t-shirts—giving the protagonist of his paintings a bit of personality and place.

Taking their titles from snippets of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and with a message of love, these paintings include areas of flat expanse, brushy texture or rounded volumes. Anatomically inventive, and quite massive, his semi-autobiographical protagonist doesn’t do much besides chill around the house. A slight angle in the shoulders, or bent knee creates a mood very poignantly, despite our being given really just an arrangement of geometric shapes to build upon. An occasional grey cloud darkens his sky, making the message “you know what, you are loved :)” seem directed at his melancholy creations as well as his audience.

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