Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Broad Street Billboard Project

The Hamilton Public Art Project, University of the Arts, Pennsylvania, US

Overview
Installation view, Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Broad Street Billboard Project, The Hamilton Public Art Project, University of the Arts, Pennsylvania, US, 2021
Installation view, Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Broad Street Billboard Project, The Hamilton Public Art Project, University of the Arts,  Pennsylvania, US, 2021
The University of the Arts presented two billboards by Los Angeles-based artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya in The Hamilton Public Art Project, an initiative of Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, on Broad Street from June 29 to December 10, 2021. Sepuya is known for his photographs that interrogate narratives of racial and gender construction, extending conceptual art with the legacies of the pictures generation.
“Studio (0304) (0306) (0310),” for example, involves a matrix of this layered seeing: a studio setup in which the observer actively becomes observant, perceives the photographer dissect space, while mirrors reflect photographs within photographs and subtly reveal past activities within the workspace. Black backdrops functionally block vision while referencing black skin.
 
In the image on the second billboard, “Studio Mirror with Roses at Night (0X5A7732),” a camera on a tripod seems to look out at the viewer yet actually records cutout photographs taped to a large mirror which reflectively looks back into another deeper space behind the white wall. Photographs of roses signal romance, sensuality and sentimentality. Sepuya's works intelligently riff on art history, here Diego Velázquez, here David Haxton, here Jeff Wall, here Richard Bruce Nugent.
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