Brandon Ndife Biography
Distended flotsam from a wrecked cargo ship? The contents of a household slowly overtaken by the forces of nature, or suddenly mutated by a thermonuclear explosion? Brandon Ndife’s hulking objects of decay may at first function as trompe-l'œil artifacts, but closer inspection reveals the artist’s sure hand and an uncanny interior logic that momentarily reconciles domestic comfort and organic chaos.
Ndife was born in 1991 in Hammond, Indiana. He earned a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2013 and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in 2020. Initially trained as a painter, Ndife has brought expressive brushwork and a perspicacious eye for color into the three-dimensional realm; he told Interview, “My sculptures became an amalgamation of all my previous tendencies and interests.” Ndife’s recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Meanderthal at Species in Atlanta (2016), Just Passin’ Thru at Interstate Projects in Brooklyn (2016), Ties that Bind at Shoot the Lobster in New York (2018), MY ZONE at Bureau in New York (2020), and Down to the Spoons and Forks at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut (2022). Ndife has also contributed to numerous group exhibitions, including Winterfest at the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colorado (2021) and Soft Water Hard Stone at the New Museum in New York. Ndife’s work has been discussed in the pages of The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and Texte zur Kunst. In 2021, he was awarded a Lotos Foundation Prize for “distinguished accomplishments and exceptional talent in the arts and sciences.”
Ndife is represented by Gabrielle Giattino's Bureau in New York. He lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.