Overview

Paul Magi Sepuya crafts pictures that feel as intimate and warm as they do formal and intellectual. His photos do what art does best: Offer an immediate jolt of both recognition and disorientation, and point toward a singular perspective - a voice, a vision. I'm tempted to say they are arresting images, or captivating, but then the involuntary connotations of those adjectives don't seem to fit; better to say that Sepuya creates images that hold you. Images that give pause and invite reflection - not so much like looking in a mirror but very mud like catching someone else, someone you care for, gazing into the mirror.

- Justin Torres, LA Times

Paul Mpagi Sepuya was born in 1982 in San Bernardino, California. He lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2004 and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2016. He is Associate Professor in Media Arts at the University of California San Diego.
 
In 2020 Paul Mpagi Sepuya presented a solo exhibition with works made between 2017 and 2018 from a range of ongoing projects at Galerie Peter Kilchmann. Sepuya has had solo exhibitions at the following international institutions (selection): Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha (2020); Contemporary Arts Museum St. Louis, US (2019); Fotomuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); KMAC Museum, Louisville, US (2017); MoCA, Los Angeles, US. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Barbican Gallery, London, UK (2020); FRAC, Besançon, FR (2020); Bass Art Museum, Miami, US (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Toronto (2019); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, US (2019); The Guggenheim Museum, New York, US (2019); Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, UK (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2018); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018); and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); New Museum, New York (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016); the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015). Most recently, Paul was an artist-in-residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and a 2021 Los Angeles Art Fund Artadia awardee. His work is currently featured in a group exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. A solo exhibition at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg is opening in November 2022.
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