Alfred Conteh, It Is What It Is

Following the recent inclusion of Conteh’s work in the traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibition Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth., and in The Legacy Museum’s inaugural exhibition at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL, It Is What It Is extends the evolution of Conteh’s acclaimed portraiture series, Two Fronts. The work elucidates Conteh’s statement that Black Americans are fighting battles on two separate fronts—one from the outside, and one from within.

Conteh paints portraits of people he meets in and around Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives and works. He gets to know the people he paints; he learns about their personal histories, asks about their aspirations and the challenges they’ve faced. His portraits capture their outward countenance—their body, posture, and fashion—wIth photorealistic perfection, while his acrylic paints are augmented with earthen elements like soil, concrete, metal dust, and melted urethane in order to arrive at a deeper truth—elemental evidence of toughness amid dereliction.

“When you see my work, you see cracked surfaces, weathered paint, things left to ruin,” Conteh says. “When I paint these things, that’s the reality of a people. That’s the type of story I’m telling in this work, through the materials. The only beauty that I see in it is that folks are still here despite those circumstances.”

Recent major exhibitions of Conteh's work include Alfred Conteh: The Sweet Spot, Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Atlanta, GA; Visions of a Cultural Commentator, curated by Madeline Beck, Cobb Marietta Museum of Art, Marietta, GA; Alfred Conteh, Selected Works, Harriet Tubman Museum, Macon, GA; the traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibition Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth.; and The Legacy Museum’s inaugural exhibition at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL among others. Conteh's work is included in the collections of the The Legacy Museum, Montgomery, AL; the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS; Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Atlanta, GA; among many others.

Image caption: Alfred Conteh, Stanton Road Water Boys, 2022. Acrylic and urethane plastic on canvas, 84 x 84 in.