Angelbert Metoyer’s artwork is heavy stuff. Walking around his “ASK: Another Sound Kingdom” installation at the Dactyl Gallery in Soho is mentally exhausting, but well worth the effort. Unlike many of his peers who package their work into pretty little pills, Metoyer’s paintings are layered with spiritual and mental residue. As your eyes span the different works, they find several keys to other mindstates in the hidden symbols and “automatic” writing scrawled across the composition. But it’s not that deep for Metoyer: “I need to sell some work so I can buy a TV.”

Metoyer, born in New Orleans on 7/7/77, is a Houston resident. This exhibit is his first show in New York since 2006′s “Masquerade of the Divine” at the Paul Rodgers 9W Gallery. That exhibit consisted of detritus the artist found on the streets of his birthplace after Hurricane Katrina tore it apart. The tone of the exhibit was grotesque; at times horrifying, at others, beautiful. Just last month, another storm shook the artist, this time Hurricane Ike which killed dozens in Houston and left Metoyer without power until just days ago. This made it a little complicated for the artist to pull together this show, and many of the works hung at Dactyl were created in the two weeks leading up to the opening date. Luckily, the artist is able to channel such energy.

The result is raw and natural; ancient in feel and palette, while shining futuristic throughout. It’s what you’d see if you were to close your eyes while listening to Sun Ra.

The exhibit is open through October 25th, take the trip.

Visual artist Kehinde Wiley lets us inside his studio. Peep the pics here!

For more Kehinde Wiley, click here to read his feature!

Visual artist Kehinde Wiley’s latest and greatest exhibit, “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos-Dakar,” opens this summer at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The artist’s journey in creating this prolific body of work has been an exploration in black male identity, representation and self.

At 31, Kehinde Wiley, the Brooklyn-based visual artist, has shaken up the international art scene with his highly ornate, large-scale portraits of young African-American men. Donned in the latest urban attire, his figures are then painted in poses taken from the portraiture of Old Masters such as 16th-century Italian Renaissance painter Titian and 18th-century English portrait artist Thomas Gainsborough.

This juxtaposition of young black men assuming the postures of European nobility lends itself to the (re)examination of identity, status and power in society. It asks not only “Who is entitled to it?” but also “Who decides entitlement?”

“My earlier work became placed with the reduction ‘hip-hop meets Old Masters,’” says Wiley. “I never understood why when dealing with the young black male body it is immediately reduced to hip-hop. Now it’s about broadening that conversation, which looks at black and brown, and how identity comes about not only culturally but historically.”

For more Kehinde, click here to see our exclusive photo gallery of his work!