Further explore the exhibition’s theme of semi-visibility through a slow-looking exercise related to this work.

Transcript
Narrator: Chris Ofili’s charcoal, oil, and acrylic painting "Blue Bathers," from 2014, depicts in indigos and purples a darkly luminous night scene outdoors. It re-creates the uncertainty of what you see and observe in the dark, making it just possible to discern two bathers but not where one begins and the other ends. Nine feet tall by six and a half wide, a wide arc descends from high on the right, suggesting a waterfall, which the figures either bathe under or with the falls behind them.

Ofili’s expressionistic style of representation thwarts easy sense-making. Adjacent the falls, vines and butterflies likewise convey the outdoors. Yet in the foreground, a mosaic-tile border dimly encircles their bathing pool, into which one of the bathers is dipping a toe as the two lie entangled at its edge. A smaller lighter-skinned figure, possibly with long wavy hair, seems to lie beneath a larger darker figure with short-cut natural black hair. Checkered tiles stretch from the pool to the far-left edge of the painting, suggesting a patio. A Roman outdoor bath may be the setting. And likely, they are not just bathing.

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