The bodies in Tesfaye Urgessa’s paintings are both potent and vulnerable. Their powerfully rendered muscles are highly visible, as though the viewer can see straight through the skin to the insides of his subjects. In some works, limbs are disembodied and figures seem to merge into one another, creating a sense of communal fusion, which can become claustrophobic on his energetic canvases. “I want my figures to have almost an emotional vulnerability,” he said in an interview at his London gallery, Saatchi Yates. “I want to keep them confident but at the same time fragile. They have been through something but made it. You might see a scar, but it’s not a mark of defeat.”
The artist’s profile has been in sharp ascent over the last few years. For “Tesfaye Urgessa in Miami,” a pop-up event with Saatchi Yates in 2022 for Miami Art Week, the artist addressed racialized European surveillance culture; at Addis Fine Art in Addis Ababa, he explored his experience of being othered as an immigrant (“No Country for Young Men,” 2019). He has also shown at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, exhibiting works painted since 2010, many of which mined the artist’s personal memories (“Beyond,” 2018).
Art has been a lifelong calling for Urgessa, whose father was a self-taught artist in Addis Ababa who worked with pencil and watercolor. Urgessa would see his father’s portraits of local families hanging in their homes. “These portraits really were part of him and what he did,” he said warmly. “When me and my brother started making art, he was very supportive, but there wasn’t much information about how to get into it. He brought us some beautiful magazines and we started copying them.”
Urgessa studied at the Ale School of Fine Art and Design in Addis Ababa, graduating in 2002. In 2009, he then moved to Germany for his MA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. During his education, he was introduced to a wide range of creative influences that continue to impact his painting style now. His work now fuses Ethiopian iconography with German Neo-Expressionism. “I went to the library and saw Pablo Picasso, the Russian classical painters, the Impressionists, German Expressionists, one after the other,” he smiled. “It was like, woah! In the past I studied Lucian Freud, not to try and paint like him, but I loved how he got his intensity and I wanted to find that for myself.”
By now, Urgessa’s work is distinctive. Bodies take a central position, often surrounded by domestic items such as furniture and rugs. His nude figures eschew the trappings of time or fashion. His strokes are gestural and physical, outlining powerful long limbs and hinting at the sinewy structure that lies inside. “I feel like the human body has potential to communicate in terms of experience,” he said. “When the body comes into the work it’s very intense for me.”
While he has always been interested in painting the human form, his work with the Black figure in particular has been deeply impacted by his time living in Germany. He describes his move from Ethiopia as a moment of personal awakening. “I’m aware of the political situation much more than I used to be,” he said. “I didn’t experience racism before moving. My first encounter with a policeman was in Germany. It was a shocking moment. I had seen experiences with racism in movies, but it was far from me. When I came to Germany it just happened and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’m a Black guy.’ Your position suddenly changes.”
Many of his paintings challenge the act of looking and being looked at. His figures often stare directly at the viewer: They are naked and potentially exposed, but they do not seem afraid of the viewer’s gaze. “I want to make it as though you are looking into someone’s private space,” he said. “They are not hiding anything, and they are OK with that. They are staring at you; you are staring at them. Sometimes there is an exchange where the viewer is scrutinized and looked at. Psychologically, if someone stares at you for too long, it makes you uncomfortable. But I like that effect in the work. In Germany, at one point, I felt I was being looked at all the time.”
Urgessa’s canvases are full and action-packed. Often, it feels as though the activity is spilling off the surface, uncontainable within the canvas. Figures are often depicted kneeling or sitting down within the frame, almost brushing up against the upper and lower edges. His marks are equally irrepressible. “I trust the process so much,” he said. “I like to keep changing the painting, it doesn’t matter where it’s going, I work with it for as long as possible. At some point it’s like a chain reaction. You add something to the painting and the context changes.”
He has an equally loose relationship with the narratives in his work, discouraging viewers from trying to figure out what his characters are doing. He is interested in more existential questions. “‘Who are they?’ or ‘What are they?’ These are the questions I like to deal with,” he said. “Paintings shouldn’t follow the natural laws that govern our world, so I like exploring new compositions. You don’t have to accept the law of gravity. I like to use the space like a shop window. I can exaggerate the things I want to receive interest with lots of color and texture so you stay there as long as possible, but you can still look around.”
Ultimately, the artist wants his paintings to communicate in a way that words cannot. He is hopeful for the possible compassion that can be inspired by painting and sees it as a form of social activism. “Words mean different things for different people,” he said. “I don’t think most people do wrong or evil things because of a deficiency of information, it’s a deficiency of experience and they don’t know what it means to be in the other position. Painting has the ability to show experience without verbal communication. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
The Artsy Vanguard 2023
The Artsy Vanguard is our annual feature recognizing the most promising artists working today. The sixth edition of The Artsy Vanguard features 10 rising talents from across the globe who are poised to become the next great leaders of contemporary art. Explore more of The Artsy Vanguard 2023 and browse works by the artists.
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