Kojo Griffin
Atlanta-based painter
Thursday, April 18, 2002

Kojo Griffin paints psychologically charged images of a cast of anthropomorphized fairy-tale and stuffed animals. Colorfully painted on wood panels and paper, his ambiguous narratives depict the animals in seemingly violent domestic and street scenes. Because they are set free floating on fields of geometric designs or cabala, I Ching, or science-inspired symbols, Griffin’s dark tales seem to be determined by unseen systems or ways of the universe. In his newer work whether the animals are harming or helping each other is often unclear, prompting the viewer to confront her/his own narrative interpretative tendencies.

Griffin has had recent solo exhibitions at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY; the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, GA; and the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC. His group shows include Freestyle, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, (2001) and 2000 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, 2000. Griffin, who studied painting from an early age, holds a BA in psychology from Morehouse College, Atlanta.