Titus Kaphar was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He obtained his Bachelor in Fine Arts in 2001 at San Jose State University and in 2006 his Master's at Yale University, School of Art.
Kaphar's artworks interact with the history of art by appropriating its styles and mediums. He cuts, bends, sculpts and mixes the work of Classic and Renaissance painters, creating formal games and new tales between fiction and quotation. He is fascinated by history: art history, American history, world history, individual history – how history is written, recorded, distorted, exploited, reimagined, and understood.
Past exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. His work is included in the collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. In 2014, TIME magazine commissioned Kaphar to create an artwork in response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
Kaphar lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.
SELECTED ONE-ARTIST EXHIBITIONS
2016-2017
- Shifting Skies, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, Decembre 2016 - January 28, 2017
2015
- Titus Kaphar: Drawing the Blinds and Asphalt and Chalk, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, January 15 – February 21, 2015.
- 99 Jeromes, ArtSpace, New Haven, Connecticut, July 17 – September 12, 2015.
- Titus Kaphar: Selections from Asphalt and Chalk, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, June 10 – August 31, 2015.
2014-2016
- The Vesper Project, Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 17 – September 13, 2014. Travelling to: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, November 2014–February 2015; American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center, Washington, D.C., November 7 – December 13, 2015; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Fall 2015–Spring 2016.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2017
- ...And the people, MARUANI MERCIER, 5 August - 4 Sepember 2017.
2016
- I See Myself in You: Selections from the Collection, Brooklyn Museum, New York, August 26, 2015 – August 2016.
- Us Is Them, The Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio, September 18, 2015 – April 3, 2016.
- Winter in America, The School, Kinderhook, New York, October 17, 2015 – January 2016.
2015
- FOCUS I: IDENTIFIED, Selected Works from the Collection of Jim Sokol and Lydia Cheney, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, University of Alabama at Birmingham, June 5 – July 25, 2015.
- The Art of Idea Festival, 21c Museum Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky, August 21 – October 11, 2015.
- Breath/Breadth: Contemporary American Black Male Identity, Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg, Virginia, September 3 – December 11, 2015.
- New Arrivals 2015: Collecting Contemporary Art at The University of Maryland, Stamp Gallery, College Park, Maryland, September 21 – December 18, 2015.
- To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, Goodman Gallery, South Africa, September 26 – November 11, 2015.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
- Brooklyn Museum, New York
- The Burger Collection, Zurich, Switzerland
- Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, Michigan
- New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut
- Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, Florida
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
- The Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio
- The Royalls Collection, Richmond, Virginia
- Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, Washington
- Sharon and John Hoffman Collection, Kansas City, Kansas
- Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York
- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
