Presenting nine new paintings and his first three-channel artist film, Wiley interweaves the canon of art history with present day politics to investigate key subjects of migration, madness and isolation in contemporary America. This comes at a critical time when the current political administration is seeking to fortify land and sea borders with an agenda that resonates globally.

Wiley departs from the singular portrait style for which he is most celebrated and engages with both classical romanticism and epic maritime allegorical painting. In a series of seascape paintings, Wiley captures dramatic scenes of men battling perilous waves at sea and more contemplative and serene portraits of men on shorelines. Here the artist crucially replaces the bold patterned textile backgrounds of previous work with darker, more earthy tones that evoke the unyielding nature of the sea.

Wiley consistently positions his practice firmly in the realism of the everyday and draws inspiration from classical portraiture while appropriating the tropes of historical paintings to engage contemporary subjects. Selecting local young men from the rough areas of remote island nations, Wiley begins by photographing his subjects in the mirrored pose of a specific historical painting. These are ordinary men wearing their own clothing and, as with previous works, each one is valorised with the same significance as their paired historical source.

In developing this compelling body of work, seascapes by J.M.W. Turner, Winslow Homer and Hieronymus Bosch, are reinterpreted into a striking new visual style that pronounces Wiley’s unparalleled painting skill. This new series retains Wiley’s familiar figurative aesthetic and at the same time expands the scope and ambition of his painting.