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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
IKÉ UDÉ (1964- )
Man in Polyester Suit. Cibachrome print, the image measuring 1232x876 mm; 48½x34½ inches, the sheet 1270x876 mm; 50x35¼ inches, with Udé's signature, title, date, and edition notation 2/10 in pencil on verso. 1995.
Meant to replicate a movie poster Iké Udé's Man in Polyester Suit was exhibited in his solo exhibition: "Celluloid Frames," Wessel O'Connor Gallery, New York in 1995. A critique of Robert Mapplethorpe's Man in Polyester Suit, 1980, the image responds to Mapplethorpe's infamous image of his lover, Milton Moore. Udé uses his lens as a Nigerian American photographer to respond to Mapplethorpe's presentation and use of the Black male body.
Nigerian-born photographer and writer, Iké Udé explores a world of dualities: African/postnationalist, photographer/performance artist, artist/spectator, male/female, mainstream/marginal, seduction/narcissism. Udé gives the political aspects of performance and representation a new vitality, melding his own theatrical selves and multiple personae with his art.
After studying in Nigeria and the United States, Udé started his artistic career as a painter in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, he began using photography to explore and deconstruct issues of representation and identity.
