{"id":2080848,"date":"2026-08-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2080848"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T09:00:00","slug":"white-cube-now-represents-artist-tesfaye-urgessa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2080848","title":{"rendered":"White Cube Now Represents Artist Tesfaye Urgessa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tWhite Cube, which has six gallery locations around the world, announced today that it will now represent artist Tesfaye Urgessa, who splits his time between Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and N\u00fcrtingen, Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe gallery will open its first solo show for the artist at its Hong Kong location on September 9, featuring new paintings and works on paper. The gallery will also include Urgessa\u2019s 2025 painting Fiber of grace (Schutz) 2<\/em> in its booth at Frieze Seoul next month.<\/p>\n

\n\tUrgessa is known for his alluring figurative paintings that feature various Black figures often in enigmatic poses and spaces. Done at a large scale, at times measuring more than 8 feet wide, Urgessa begins his paintings by drawing them out on the floor before introducing oil to the canvas via a long brush.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis art education began by watching his father reproduce church murals. He first studied at the Alle School of Fine Art and Design in Addis Ababa, before continuing his arts training at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Ku\u0308nste in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2014, the year of his graduation, he won the Prize of the State Academy of Stuttgart.<\/p>\n

\n\tUrgessa\u2019s most prominent exhibition to date was the inaugural Ethiopian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Titled \u201cPrejudice and Belonging,\u201d that presentation featured 18 paintings that Artforum described<\/em> as \u201cscenes of lost, anxious domesticity, where lean, fragmented bodies flash with bold strips of color on angular sofas and carpets.\u201d When asked about them, Urgessa said, \u201cIt\u2019s an invitation for the viewer to write their own story, thereby confronting their own prejudices and judgments.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tesfaye Urgessa\u2019s Fiber of grace (Schutz) 2<\/em>\u00a0(2025) will be on offer at White Cube\u2019s Frieze Seoul booth.<\/span>Art: \u00a9Tesfaye Urgessa. Photo: Theo Christelis\/\u00a9White Cube<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSince the Venice Biennale, he has had a solo show at the Sainsbury Center in Norwich, England, in 2025, and his first solo museum show in Asia at the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, which closes on August 9. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, and the Uffizi Galleries in Florence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUrgessa\u2019s distinctive figurative paintings deftly draw\u00a0from Ethiopian and European art historical references to produce a wholly singular painterly style,\u201d Ikenna Malbert, a London-based associate director of the gallery, told ARTnews<\/em> in an email. \u201cHis work tackles pressing themes relating to migration, family and community, and an increasingly unsettled socio-political world.\u00a0This\u00a0converging\u00a0of art histories to create\u00a0a new visual language deeply resonates with White Cube\u2019s wider programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correction, August 6, 2026: <\/strong>An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Urgessa\u2019s Red Brick Art Museum show opens on August 9; it, in fact, closes on August 9.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Portrait-of-Tesfaye-Urgessa.jpg?w=1024″] White Cube, which has six gallery locations around the world, announced today that it will now represent artist Tesfaye Urgessa, who splits his time between Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and N\u00fcrtingen, Germany. The gallery will open its first solo show for the artist at its Hong Kong location on September 9, featuring new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2080848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2080848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2080848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2080848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2080848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}