Mariane Ibrahim, which has gallery locations in Chicago and Paris, now represents Ferrari Sheppard, a Los Angeles–based artist whose work can currently be seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He will have his first solo show at the gallery in 2023.
Sheppard is best known for his paintings of Black people that are defined by their loose brushwork. To make them, Sheppard relies on an unusual combination of acrylic paint, charcoal, and 24K gold.
“What I love about his work is that it’s really dynamic,” Mariane Ibrahim, the gallery’s owner, said in an interview. “The works really blur between abstraction and figuration. It’s very difficult to look away when you see a work of his.”
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The gallery has included Sheppard’s work in a two-person exhibition with Carmen Neely, titled “Where to Begin …,” that opened at its Paris space in December. His work will also be included in the gallery’s 10th-anniversary group exhibition, “La Vie en Rose,” which opened earlier this month at its Chicago location. The Chicago-based artist was also included in Ibrahim’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2021, and is currently showing in “Artists Inspired by Music: Interscope Reimagined” at LACMA, for which he has created a work inspired by Blackstreet’s No Diggity album. His most recent solo show was at the UTA Artist Space in Beverly Hills, California, last year.
[Read more about “Interscope Reimagined” exhibition at LACMA.]
Ibrahim said she was fascinated by the directions that Sheppard’s work was taking, but she noted that while there has been “such a gold rush on young artists, and mostly African American and Black artists,” she hasn’t built her roster in a reactionary way. Instead, she has focused on what she called “the mutual contributions: what is his contribution and what is going to be my contribution to his practice.”
In a statement, Sheppard said, “My artistic practice has always aimed to show the world beauty and present an opportunity, to both the viewer and myself, to become more humane. I’m excited to embark on this journey with Mariane and I would like to thank our supporters.”