Contact Us

Contact us on the right with your email address and message, or directly email info@erniewolfegallery.com

1655 Sawtelle Blvd
Los Angeles, CA, 90025
United States

310-478-2960

Drawing on 40+ years of field collecting in both East and West Africa, the Ernie Wolfe Gallery specializes in juxtaposition exhibitions between the works of modern American, often Southern California based artists, and those of contemporary African painters and sculptors, as well as traditional tribal sculpture and furniture.

Gilbert Forson

“It all started when I was nine and I won the first place for the whole school in art. Afterwards I had a scholarship throughout my Junior Secondary level, but afterwards I needed to go to the village to help my mother in farming. By His Grace my talent was again noticed when I drew a sketch on the wall of my mother. I became an apprentice and then through my hardworking, obedience and respect, I was put in charge of the workshop.”
— Gilbert Forson in Extreme Canvas 2 (2012) by Ernie Wolfe III, pg. 75

Born 1975, Also spelled Gilbert Forsom. Ghana, West Africa. An art troubadour whose work has taken his studio to various locales in the Central and Coastal regions, often staying for several years at a time. Uses dramatic highlights, including sparkling electric blue or white stars as a signature element in his work. Has developed a highly evolved, personalized style of exaggerated form. Specialized in imagination-driven images with the norm being an out of scale, disproportionate relationship between featured subjects. One of the very best depicters of yet-to-be-invented firearms. Equally adept with graphic muscularity and eccentric garb. Mostly utilized the two-bag format on flour sacks for his posters. Began painting posters in the early 1990s and stopped when the demand for hand-painted interpretations was rendered obsolete by cheaper mass produced technology driven advertising, just before the millennium. Laments that the advent of computer-printed images has been so effective in displacing him from his passion, painting movie posters.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

1993: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

1996: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica

1999: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2001: Death-Stalking Sleep-Walking Barbarian Ninja Terminators: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, Los Angeles, (voted best exhibition of 2001 by LA Weekly)

2001 – 2002: Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2001: “Extreme Canvas”, Cavin Morris Gallery, New York, NY September 2001

2003: Seven from Ghana, Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT January 2003

2003: Outrageous Supercharge: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

2004: Africa Screams, Iwalewa-Haus Afrikazentrum der Universitat Bayreuth, 2004

Traveled to Vienna November 2004 – February 2005

2006: Extreme Canvas, Center for African American Culture, Pittsburgh, PA

2006: Serpents, Mermaids and Action Heroes, Parkland College Art Gallery, Champaign, IL

2007: “Black Like We”, Feldman-Horn Gallery, Harvard-Westlake School, North Hollywood, CA

2008: “Extreme Canvas: Hand Painted Movie Posters from Ghana”, ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood, CA

2009: “Out of Africa: Obama and McCain Praise Portraits and Visual Narratives”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles; Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on May 21, 1999, by art critic David Pagel

2009: “No This Is It: Michael Jackson, 25 Years of Praise Portraits”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2012: “Michael Jackson in the After-Life: Praise Portraits and Commentary Paintings from Ghana”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2013: Wow Women, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2013: The Horror The Horror!, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, curated by Brandon Boyd

2013: “Viva Mandela!”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2014: Knock Off – Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange, CA

2014: “Ghana Pop”, Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles

2014: Continental Convergence: Hand-Painted Martial Arts Posters from Ghana, Mandarin Plaza, Chinatown, Los Angeles

2019 – 2020, Baptized by Beefcake: The Golden Age of Hand Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Poster House, New York, NY co-curated by Ernie Wolfe III and Angelina Lippert

PUBLICATIONS:

2000: Extreme Canvas: Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe III, Dilettante Press, 2000

2009: African Arts, Volume 42, number 3, 20, Autumn 2009, “The Radiance of the King”, Don Cosentino

2012: Extreme Canvas 2: The Golden Age of Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, Ernie Wolfe III, Kesho/Malaika Press, 2012