Sullivan Goss will present “Labyrinth of Words,” its third solo exhibit by contemporary painter Wosene Worke Kosrof. The exhibit runs July 26-Sept. 23 at the gallery, 11 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara.
The show features 16 new paintings and will be accompanied by a catalog that includes a new essay by Richard B. Woodward, the founding curator of the African Arts Department at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.
The artist will be on hand for the opening on 1ST Thursday, Aug. 1.
“Labyrinth of Words” is the name of Kosrof’s newest series of paintings. Many of the artist’s most iconic works are visually complex, blending the letter-forms from the biblically-aged Amharic alphabet of his native Ethiopia with abstracted iconography that suggests story-telling.
His compositions come out of the “all-over painting” approach to abstraction, which involves filling the whole canvas one passage at a time until the whole thing feels finished and balanced.
In recent years, Kosrof has been a leading voice in the international discourse on abstract art. In 2020, his painting “Elemental Coltrane II” was featured in the De Young Museum, and in 2022, “A Taste for Words X” was acquired by the Crocker Museum.
Born in 1950 in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa, Kosrof formally trained at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, and completed a BFA with distinction in 1972.
In the aftermath of a 1974 military coup, he was compelled to leave Ethiopia, eventually enrolling as a Ford Foundation Talent Scholar at Howard University for graduate work in studio painting in 1978.
In 1991, he moved to California and has been based in Berkeley for many years. His work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Crocker Museum, Sacramento; and Fowler Museum at UCLA.