Photo credit: Isaac Campbell
Asif Hoque (b. 1991; Rome, Italy) builds his own mythos in his paintings, drawing from classical traditions of both East and West. Born to Bangladeshi parents and raised between Rome and South Florida, the artist's multicultural background figures heavily into his work. Hoque blends Roman and Bengal traditions to spin victorious narratives of love, joy, and allegorical triumph. His grandiose compositions center fantastical beasts and joyous Brown bodies that dance and play among mountainous landscapes, billowing clouds, or crashing waves.
Hoque's imagined worlds glow with the joyful, almost ethereal sheen of his lush, meditative palettes. In his recent work, the artist has shifted to a palette of rich golds and greens. Gold is a hue that holds great meaning for Hoque: as a reference to his Bengali heritage, which prizes gold as a gift to be given at birth, and for its reflective properties, which allow the artist to further his investigation into representations of luster and light. His characters, most notably the Bengal tiger, are sheathed in the lustrous glow of these colors. Throughout his oeuvre, Hoque fuses the art historical preoccupation with painted light, mythological lore, and his personal heritage to build worlds where stately Brown deities and sacred creatures rejoice among the natural elements.
Asif Hoque's work has been exhibited at Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK; Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL; Kapp Kapp, New York, NY, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, and the Xiao Hui Wang Art Museum, Suzhou, China. The artist studied fine art at Pratt Institute and Hunter College. Hoque currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.