Marcus Jahmal

Marcus Jahmal (b. 1990) lives and works in New York. He was raised in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood, growing up in a family with roots in the West Indies and American south. His paintings synthesize a diverse range of inspirations and autobiography, drawing from photographs, ancient rituals, and personal memories. Jahmal's works move fluidly between genres spanning architectural interiors and still life, as well as landscape and portraiture. Developing his compositions directly upon the surface of each canvas, Jahmal coaxes imaginary, yet uncannily familiar, scenes to life, exploring themes encompassing dreams and folkloric Americana, and the contemporary realities of gentrification and city dwelling. As Jahmal explains, “most of [my] figures have a personality and a link to real life; I'm interested in a kind of filtered realism”. Skulls, anthropomorphic creatures, rolling landscapes, thieves, card players, and policemen, occupy spaces that feel steeped in a collective memory at once primordial and precognitive of some future world where polymorphism reigns and metaphors are fluid. Marcus Jahmal has exhibited widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His inaugural monograph, Solid Ghosts,was published in 2018, and he has been the subject of a recent institutional solo exhibition at the Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, in Brest, France.