NP Contemporary Art Space presents Portraits / Positions, a solo exhibition by Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

Portraits / Positions presents several new large-scale photo-based works continuing the artist’s exploration into the act of portrait-making as an affixing process and the affect the act itself has on those relationships it attempts to define. Like previous projects, these pieces are situated among the artist’s intimate circle. Rather than a serial collection of portraits that isolate the physical connecting lines between people, these new works focus on the shared emotional lines within the physical site and situation in which portraiture happens, as well as the translation and accumulation in meaning each work has as it exists in the public (gallery) and private (home) spheres.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (1982, San Bernardino, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He studied photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in New York, Los Angeles, Basel, Sydney, Toronto, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg. His work has been featured and reviewed in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Interview, Capricious, V, Paper, and BUTT, among other publications. Recent exhibitions include 30 Seconds Off an Inch at The Studio Museum in Harlem and 50 Artists Photograph the Future at Higher Pictures and recent awards include the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency (2009-2010) and Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2010). A monograph of his work was published in April 2007. The Accidental Egyptian and Occidental Arrangements, a publication of his collaboration with fellow artist Timothy Hull, was just published.