![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/1c07800a6cc7d4fc715cf59c0357bcd4f2119f5c-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/36729b93333da4d4de8976be8c1ef827297687d3-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/5dac966152b995de59dc6622e15eac5190c31f27-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/4f57a440e064bdd089a33e1197a730e5e87029e5-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/d0bdc17ae29bdf0b26c3ad20d9447068e84b2c31-2000x2784.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/a0f33cf8f543e5bb36c233390f77f5f9f341ceae-2000x1746.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/13fe03bb99d2c76d8427370b1dc69441bf457fb7-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/49a1faa0f2c624156107cd6316faa751c2d3713a-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/6a1d32b4def0738e0e3a6bc787d70b1dd21da61e-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/53e886e9361faa3aeedff6cc12a7f21ba529f005-2000x2883.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/91d1bf19f1419daa5d3ece089002551c24126441-2000x1333.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Installation view of Art Basel Miami Beach at Josh Lilley, presenting Derek Fordjour](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/bcd42decc7018dc8933b0dac3fb8313f08e118cf-2000x2786.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
Artworks
![Couplet 50 by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/d7d344e59bd8e9c7137a13a03ceb1fe1458f0e3d-950x576.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Haberdashery by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/590f95ff28753738a753adeba98f540d36deb736-2632x2000.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Pageant by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/702f5475a55e102178ac5d3ca2219bad8f6b711a-2000x1529.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Picture Day by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/64cc9c10923be0e1d2bd98cbf0db9737d0e95699-2000x2661.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Showtime (Blue Deuce) by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/6883cf3d458e81f3d46674fba802dd245ec706b4-1206x857.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Single Pivot Turn by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/8220bc4ad6a8ddec42a1a1979981f435379410d7-2000x3391.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Six Hand Stand by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/f34e086fef1c639b53d6cb30f31dc8980269d163-2000x2853.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Conspicuous Consumption by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/7ae907f97ce662290fdbcaa0a3afc9218e3d1d5e-1500x2248.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
![Burden Cycle by Derek Fordjour, 2018](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/45bzdam9/production/1ca03a6bde0674024e47d2d6a74469de9d38b861-1305x1865.jpg?w=6&blur=10)
Derek Fordjour
Art Basel Miami Beach
5 – 9 December 2018
Backroom is a site-specific installation that departs from the clinical, austere feel of a convention-centre booth in favor of a transformed backlot environment that evokes both a shanty-styled stockroom and a backside to a traveling show. Fordjour recontextualizes a space of dealmaking and display by building up a typically pristine interior with locally sourced materials, including loose pea gravel and corrugated steel, tuning the texture and tweaking notions of value and values. A space simultaneously beautiful and wrought, Backroom" is an atmospheric stage for a showcase of the artist's lush, textural portrait painting and a large kinetic sculpture. Backroom brings the artist's studies of game, carnival and sport, as well as the implied power structures around rewards and sanctions, to the venue of a prominent art fair.
Derek Fordjour (b. 1974, Memphis, USA) is a New-York-based painter, sculptor and installation artist. He was the 2016 artist-in-residence at the Sugar Hill Museum in Harlem and the 2017 artist-in-residence at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in New York, and is a visiting critic and lecturer at universities including Yale University and the Cooper Union. Fordjour was the subject of a solo exhibition entitled Half Mast at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2018, and the 2018 recipient of the MTA Commission for a permanent work of art to be installed at 145th street subway station in Harlem.