PORTLAND, OR.- Saturday, July 14, at 2 pm, critically acclaimed, African-American artist Kehinde Wiley will speak at the Portland Art Museum concerning his current international projects and the provocative paintings featured in the Museum’s exhibition Kehinde Wiley (through August 19, 2007).

“This is a special opportunity to meet a major new voice in American art, celebrated with cover stories in Art in America and ARTnews magazines,” said Bruce Guenther, Chief Curator, “Wiley is an articulate and compelling spokesman for issues of race and identity.”

Wiley, who describes his work as “opera on a static stage,” will discuss his artist practice and illustrate his remarks with slides of his recent work. The lecture will take place in the Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium. Tickets are required (Members: $5 and non-members: $10) and available in advance at the Museum box offices, online at portlandartmuseum.org, or by calling 503.226.0973.

The Museum’s exhibition Kehinde Wiley, currently on view in the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, presents seven recent monumental, allegory-inspired portraits by Wiley. Drawn from private collections across the country, the works mine deeply rooted traditions of Western painting to address prevailing social stereotypes and the cultural constructions of identity as manifested in dress, gesture, and gender. Marrying historical tropes of religious and secular portraiture from the Renaissance to the 19th century with images of young African-American males from urban hip-hop culture, Wiley aestheticizes contemporary forms of masculine beauty, while questioning historical style as a manifestation of outside power.

Wiley’s ornately framed paintings incorporate historical themes and motifs, in the time-honored artistic tradition of appropriation, also known today in music as sampling. Surrounded by Renaissance or Baroque motifs and wearing urban hip-hop clothing, the subjects address the viewer with nobility and confidence, simultaneously recalling images from religious iconography, royal portraiture, and rap culture. Wiley surrounds his very modern subjects with the conventions of European past, addressing the history of power, patronage, and the quest for prestige.

This is the sixth installation in the Miller Meigs Contemporary Art series organized by Guenther, and supported by the Miller Meigs Endowment for the Contemporary Arts.

About Kehinde Wiley: Born in 1977 in Los Angeles, Wiley graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work is in public collections nationally, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Denver Art Museum, and the Studio Museum of Harlem. His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at the 2006 Whitney Biennial and a one-person exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.

About the Lecture: Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage, When: Saturday, July 14, 2 pm at the Whitsell Auditorium. Admission: Museum members: $5; non-members: $10. Tickets are required and available in advance from the Museum’s box office, by calling 503.226.0973, or online at portlandartumuseum.org. Seating is limited. Ticket holders are asked to be seated ten minutes prior to lecture, or seat may be re-ticketed.