Since the mid-1990s, Chris Ofili’s (born 1968) painstakingly crafted paintings and sculptures have dazzled – and often distressed – viewers with a fusion of opposing forces: sacred meets profane, formal bows to demotic, and exalted bleeds into vulgar.

Paintings of rare beauty are propped on elephant dung; deities squat to defecate; and lovers embrace and yet are forcibly bound.

Conceived by Massimiliano Gioni, the DESTE Foundation’s ‘2000 Words series’ gives insight into the work of some of today’s most exciting contemporary artists through the vantage point of the Dakis Joannou Collection.

“Collecting is, for me, an adventure, a set of different—lived—experiences, a constant flow of meeting, talking, listening, looking. It’s an act of understanding and participating,” says Joannou, collector and founder of the Deste Foundation.

Each monograph features a critical, forthright essay and a survey of the artist’s works in this important collection

This volume features an essay by Katherine Brinson, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, that explores the inherent dualities in Chris Ofili’s works.

Published by the Deste Foundation, a non-profit institution established in Geneva in 1983 by collector Dakis Joannou, with an exhibition space in Athens, Greece.

Massimiliano Gioni is an Italian collector and contemporary art critic currently based in New York. He is the Artistic Director at New Museum, New York.