The most absorbing moments in Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s latest solo are when the artist’s control appears to slip
Much of the work in Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s latest exhibition – 17 drawings and 21 paintings across Jack Shainman’s two Manhattan locations – feels awfully nice. A red-chalk drawing on creamcoloured paper at the Chelsea space, Neverwhere (all works but one 2026), shows a man lying on his stomach, propped up on folded forearms, eyes alert, lips slightly parted, looking like a perfect listener. In the Tribeca gallery, the painting 8 Spectres In Damask features a similarly posed figure – this time nearly lifesize, lounging with a pack of well-behaved dogs; another chalk drawing titled Bank of Revelation depicts three dancers watching a fourth balance on one leg, calmly demonstrating a pose. These works are good company, the visual equivalent of a relaxed and easy vibe.
Sometimes Yiadom-Boakye passes quickly and cleverly over a form. The charcoal drawing Pieces of Work shows three women in a semicircle. Two wear leotards. The third bends down to fix her dress. Her left foot and leg appear unfinished; they are only outlined, perhaps to indicate that she is not yet ready to dance. Conversely, the drawing Alto depicts only hands, hymnals and heads – the empty space and partial forms indicating a choir and its director, out of their bodies, ecstatic mid-song. Yiadom-Boakye’s work is most compelling when the scenes are psychologically tense. Hanging next to Neverwhere, for example, the painting A Cause for Pastoral Concern clusters four women in dance clothes with punk, blue hair on a museum bench in front of a painting. Judging from their facial expressions, they seem to be having a serious conversation. The gallery wall depicted – painted in choppy, short brushstrokes, white over blue – looks softer than an ordinary wall and bulges slightly, creating a thick air around the women. Similarly, the blue-and-white-tiled floor in The Diligent Crest of Midday tilts and buckles, wobbling beneath a photographer and his shirtless subject, suggesting both instability in their relationship and the unpredictability of image-making.
Yiadom-Boakye rarely moves beyond suggestion – an uncomfortable look on someone’s face, someone else pressing on a table. Three paintings with titles referring to the flavours of tarts – Aux Citrons (lemon), Aux Myrtilles (blueberry) and Aux Framboises (raspberry) (2025) – present figures whose expressions range from glee to glassy-eyed regret as they eat their treats. It’s unclear whether this is comedy or commentary. Yiadom-Boakye depends on a mix of imagination, memory, images from art history and photographs, though she doesn’t share this source material. If she did, it might provide welcome complication and specificity. Viewers are left to guess who the robed Shakespearean types are in the dramatic charcoal drawings A May Day in Mourning and A May Night in Mourning. In interviews, the artist has spoken of fiction, jazz and feeling rather than specific narratives. For the last 15 years, her paintings and drawings have been uniformly praised for their depictions of her characters’ elegance and inwardness. Fans of her work will recognise here familiar fixtures from her oeuvre – crisp white tablecloths, a man in a striped shirt. Yet these new works are frequently too controlled or overly comfortable, repeating familiar but unidentified figures and situations, often with only slight variation. The most absorbing moments occur when the walls or the floor start to morph, when the artist’s control appears to slip.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Many A Moonlit Caveat is on view at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, through 31 July
From the Summer 2026 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
