Curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi with Misa Jeffereis

With key slots in the New Museum’s 2017–18 “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” the Museum of Modern Art’s “Being: New Photography 2018,” both New York, and a slew of other museum and gallery shows, Paul Mpagi Sepuya hasn’t exactly lacked for attention over the past few years. But this museum survey, rounding up more than forty works made since 2005, will be the first to offer what the LA-based photographer calls a “longer view.” The exhibition will range from relatively straightforward early portraits and nudes to recent images that all but lose the figure in intricately layered still-life arrangements. Working primarily in the studio, often with mirrors that allow him to simultaneously reveal and conceal his subjects, Sepuya continues to sharpen his focus on queer communities and men of color—friends and lovers whose presence grounds his increasingly abstract work in genuine feeling. Travels to the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, October 25, 2019–March 14, 2020.

— Vince Aletti