UTA Artist Space is pleased to announce Arcmanoro Niles’ first solo show on the West Coast, titled I Guess By Now I’m Supposed To Be A Man: I’m Just Trying To Leave Behind Yesterday.
In the central gallery space, Niles debuts a series of seven large-scale paintings that explore personal journeys at various stages of life. Underscoring how our relationships and experiences shift our attitude over the course of our lifetime, the series opens with a child absorbed in the workings of a model train set and ends with an elderly man in a doctor’s office, hands clasped as he weighs the heavy notion of mortality.
Niles takes us room-by-room through his highly saturated interiors to show figures in states of deep introspection: a young adult is slumped against a bathtub; a couple is in the intimate surroundings of their bedroom; and a middle-aged man contemplatively faces his reflection in a mirror. Some seem aware of our presence and meet our gaze with a challenging stare, while some appear more vulnerable with heads bowed or turned away. Each painting is disrupted by Niles’s signature “seekers”—small, outlined creatures representing an impulsive force influencing his characters—that break Niles’s traditional portraiture compositions and add to the otherworldly feel.
Niles additionally presents a series of new small-scale portraits depicting friends and family members, and a number of paintings he has made over the past three years. While his other paintings offer cinematic narratives, often rendered to human scale, these intimate portraits allow a closer examination of his subjects as individuals.
I Guess By Now I’m Supposed To Be A Man: I’m Just Trying To Leave Behind Yesterday is produced in collaboration with Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York.
ABOUT ARCMANORO NILES
Arcmanoro Niles (b. 1989, Washington, D.C.) earned a BFA from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, an MFA from New York Academy of Art, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has participated in exhibitions at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE; the David C. Driskell Center, College Park, MD; Long Gallery, New York, NY; Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY; and Shanghai University, Shanghai, China; the MAC Belfast, Belfast, UK; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; among others. His work is included in the collection of The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; the Dallas Museum of Art; Dallas, TX; the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, Asbury, NJ; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. A recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Niles lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
ABOUT UTA ARTIST SPACE
UTA Artist Space is an exhibition venue in the heart of Beverly Hills that is committed to showcasing art by globally recognized talent. Since its establishment in 2016, UTA Artist Space has presented notable exhibitions with interdisciplinary artists and creatives, including Ai Weiwei, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Derrick Adams, Petra Cortright, The Haas Brothers, Larry Clark, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, and Mariane Ibrahim. Open Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm. Open Monday by appointment. For more information, please visit utaartistspace.com.
PRESS CONTACTS
Adam Abdalla
President, Cultural Counsel
Jill Robinson
Senior Account Executive, Cultural Counsel