JEAN SHAFIROFF HOSTS IKE UDE PRIVATE VIEWING

Jean Shafiroff And Ike Ude

To celebrate the latest exhibition of photographs by New York-based, Lagos, Nigeria-born artist Iké Udé, Style & Sympathies, philanthropist Jean Shafiroff hosted a private viewing at the Leila Heller Gallery with gallery owner Leila Heller. Following the exclusive tour, Ms. Shafiroff and Ms. Heller hosted a luncheon with the artist Iké Udé at The Americano Restaurant on Thursday, October 24, 2013.

Those in attendance included Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of The Museum of FIT, Randi Schatz, President of AVENUE Magazine, Thomas Woodham Smith, Creative Director of Masterpiece London, fashion designer Maggie Norris, Nazy Vassegh, Chief Executive of Masterpiece Art, Design & Antique Fair, Lara Bjork, Director at Art Capital Group, jazz and cabaret singer Cole Rumbough, interior designer Susan Gutfreund and socialite Lucia Hwong Gordon.

Recently featured by The New York Times, artist Iké Udé, well-known for his work in exploring the world of dualities, unveiled to guests his unique perspective on style and artistic representation through his photographic works. Style & Sympathies includes a selection of self-portraits from Mr. Udé’s critical acclaimed Sartorial Anarchy series which poeticize colors, sumptuous fabrics, and composition and transcend the traditional aesthetic portraiture by adopting a post-modern twist. The portraits show a highly stylized world of color and improvisational virtuosity, in which he employs men’s fashion ensembles that have been culled from various historical times and geographies. Among the highlights of Mr. Udé’s new photographic collection are the portraits of glamorous women in styles represented by Ms. Shafiroff, Amy Fine Collins, Special Correspondent, Vanity Fair and Author, and Ms. Heller. Mr. Udé’s works remain on display at the gallery through November 9th, 2013.

About the Artist Iké Udé: At once a reference to and departure from Dandyism, Udé's Sartorial Anarchy series is essentially post-dandyism in its conceptual use of fashion/costume as an index of culture. Udé has been engaged with this body of work since 2010, when the first photographs of this series were presented in the exhibition, The Global Africa Project, at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York. Most recently, Udé has continued his Sartorial Anarchy series for the exhibition Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum.

 Photo By: Patrick McMullan