Gallery Weisbard pleased to present an exhibition of new drawings by Johnson Weree.
Born in Liberia in 1970, Johnson Weree fled his war-torn homeland and has lived in Rotterdam since 1998. Without a fixed residence, he has continued to work with remarkable dedication, drawing every day in public places such as the library, the Pauluskerk, and McDonald’s. Over the past year, he created ten drawings especially for our gallery. These works will be presented together for the first time and offered for sale.
Weree’s portraits are immediately recognizable: colourful, intense, and unsettling. Faces appear to stare directly back at us. Figures emerge within figures, as if the image were opening onto another interior life. His drawings are not bound by academic convention. They unfold with their own visual logic, revealing an alternative reality of great force and irrepressible beauty.
His work has been shown at Kunsthal Rotterdam, in the context of the Museum of Everything, and at Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum in Stockholm. It is also included in the collection of Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent. In 2021, Weree was prominently featured in African Artists: From 1882 to Now, the Phaidon overview of 300 significant African artists, alongside figures such as Marlene Dumas and William Kentridge.
Weree’s life and practice also call to mind the American artist Lee Godie, who lived on the streets of Chicago, called herself a “French Impressionist”, and sold her portraits directly to passers-by. Like Godie, Weree has built a deeply personal artistic universe outside the usual structures of the art world, while producing work of undeniable presence and intensity.
We have unwavering faith in Johnson Weree’s work. This exhibition is an invitation to encounter the drawings closely, to recognize their singularity, and to support an artist whose practice has persisted with extraordinary strength.