If you haven't yet heard the name Njideka Akunyili Crosby, then you haven't been paying attention, as she is a young (32-year-old) Los Angeles-based artist on a meteoric rise and her work is phenomenal--the most jaw-droppingly wonderful and accomplished work I have encountered in an age.  That said, I walked right by it at the New Museum's 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, where both her two paintings on view and I were overwhelmed by the hubbub.  Akunyili Crosby has since gone on to have simultaneous solo exhibitions at L.A.'s Hammer Museum and Art + Practice and to win the Studio Museum in Harlem's Wein Prize.  As of November 23, 2015, a billboard entitled Before Now After (Mama, Mummy and Manna), which reproduces one of her paintings, … [Read more...]