Alexandre Diop, Run For Your Life! at Stephen Friedman Gallery, Cork Street, London, October 2025 – And on we go with the week before the week; “Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present Run For Your Life!, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Franco-Senegalese artist Alexandre Diop. This marks the artist’s debut show with the gallery and his first solo exhibition in London” and yes, it more than lived up to the great expectations. We’re in the run up to Frieze week now, things were said already in terms of the week earlier today back with the Brandon Ndife piece on the previous page, we’re over on the other side of Cork Street now, we’ve stepped over from Holtermann to the biggest beast on the Street, we’re in the seemingly almost always rewarding Stephen Friedman Gallery. There’s been some really strong shows in this big space in recent times; that brilliant Jaune Quick-To-See Smith exhibition, that Jim Hodges show, the colour Jeffrey Gibson and this recently opened instantly exciting Alexandre Diop exhibition easily stacks up with the very best the gallery has consistantly offered in recent years.  

“Alexandre Diop’s powerful mixed-media works explore themes of history, metaphorical archaeology and socio-political change, with this body of work focusing on the relationship between movement and time, represented by dance or migration. The title of the exhibition, Run For Your Life!, is an invitation to stand for change, show tolerance, and be alert to crises around the world. Diop’s practice is interdisciplinary; his experience as a dancer, musician, and visual artist allows him to create artworks that transcend traditional paintings” and yes, these paintings, if they are paintings? These very big things that hang on the wall, they do dance in such exciting ways. It instantly feels alive in here in that reverential silence of an gallery, of the gallery. You feel like your eye is dancing, tracking through the layers like a kid in sweet shop, looking at the bits behind the bits that are stapled over the bits and the way it all hangs together, that bit stitched to that bit, that bit painted over, great big powerful mixed-media works that demand you explore them and then go back and explore them again (and again).

Big busy pieces that hum with colour, that dance with rhythm, that combine found and recycled materials in such an exciting way. Bits of scrap metal, wood, leather, textile remnants, things stitched the things, bits of packaging and then in it, over it, beneath it, big bites of oil painting not fighting with, the not there is important, not fighting with the layering, the burning, the tearing, stapling and collaging and a whole load of artistic languages, a whole load of languages in general, some of it I suspect very personal some of it maybe more political. Narratives that engage with a whole gang of things from Dada, Art Brut, Expressionism, street art, all while dancing with both a West African aesthetic and the language of contemporary urban culture. Should Jean-Michel Basquiat be mentioned here? Not in that obvious way you need to mention Basquiat at so many so called Street Art shows you find yourself at, but it surely is there, the same reference points maybe? The same things filtered? Oh there’s so many things in here, historical references, cultural references, artistic references…  

“It reflects on how individuals are bound by external forces – systems of illegality, oppression, and exclusion. In A Vos marques ! Prêt ! Illegal, 2025, a central figure cries out yet remains unheard, embodying the suffocation of life within unjust structures. The work echoes the story of Jesse Owens, the African-American runner who won Olympic gold in 1936 under Nazi rule, and becomes a call for freedom, justice, and resilience against overwhelming odds. Diop constructs new worlds where historical, political, and social narratives unfold, offering his figures a space to resist, endure, and reimagine history”.

Here’s another #43SecondFilm…

Hey look, this is a powerful show, an exciting show, when art is like this then it does indeed excite. This is a show to spend hours with, pieces to explore and explore again, best exhibition in ages and much needed. Do go check out Alexandre Diop’s British debut if you can and were we really the only two in here on a Thursday afternoon, go see this show, just walk on in, no one is going to ask you for money, it is all there just waiting. Someone said the other day that I got far too excited about art shows, what bulshit, if things like this don’t excite then why bother going, I’m not here to be polite and lowkey about all this, if it excites then I’ll shout, I do cherry pick, I haven’t mentioned a number of frankly rather boring shows I went to after this one, art like this exites, of course I get excited about the good exhibitions, of course I want to tell you about it…  (sw)    

Stephen Friedman Gallery is at 5–6 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LQ. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am until 6pm (11am to 5pm on Saturdays). The Alexandre Diop exhibition is on until November 1st 2025.

Previous Stephen Friedman Gallery coverage on these pages

As always. do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…