My Sunshine
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present My Sunshine, featuring a new body of work by Brooklyn-based artist Asif Hoque in his third exhibition with the gallery. This chapter of Hoque’s career-long visual epic exalts the moment that its hero—the artist’s avatar, Golden Boy—first beholds his beloved, translating autobiography into mythic register.
The distinct compositions of this vibrant cycle all originate from a single, charged second, frozen and refracted. In this instant, Golden Boy encounters a celestial being whose warm radiance illuminates and invites all in her orbit. His perspective guides how viewers experience her: weightless, magnetic, aglow. Draped in white and enhaloed in loose curls, she emits a gleam that holds the blues of the sky and sea at its perimeter. Unspoken, but felt, is the revelation that the golden light that has given Golden Boy his strength and name, and that has permeated Hoque’s prior cycles, originates here, with her. This truth, laid bare in a fleeting moment, is monumentalized across seven canvases, each its own resplendent love letter.
This series expands Hoque’s mythologized world, where luminous beings embodying the artist and those he holds dear traverse churning cloudscapes and whipping waves. With Golden Boy at its center, attended by winged putti and an ever-growing cast of fabled creatures, the realm’s expansion mirrors its hero’s growth.
Hoque’s episodic portfolio holds clues to the long arc of his art historical study. Ancient Greek and Roman mythologies, Baroque grandeur, and Rococo exuberance shape his approach to narrative and composition. His light and color draw equally from the Luminism of Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) and Transcendentalism of Agnes Pelton (1881- 1961); meanwhile, his brush reveals the mutual influence of South Asian miniature painting and the street art that ornamented his adolescence in South Florida. These myriad influences and more anchor Hoque’s hybrid visual language, through which he translates the sensations of memory and environment into lush world-building.
Even when tamed to an intimate scale, its splendor remains potent, and its characters divine.
Text written by Indira A. Abiskaroon
About Asif Hoque
Asif Tanvir Hoque (b. 1991) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has appeared in numerous group shows. As a Bangladeshi immigrant, who was raised between Rome and South Florida, Hoque’s paintings attempt to figuratively and stylistically combine aspects of multicultural identity.
His early work highlights his fascination with classical fine arts, but with the progression of his skill and his self-discovery, Hoque challenges his audience to explore aspects of self that are authentic. Hoque hopes to address the unique experience of living in the “in between”.
