For decades, Arthur Jafa collected images from magazines, newspapers and advertisements and organized them into books, some of which he used as a reference for his work on cinema and cinematography. In recent years, he has transferred this practice to his computer. APEX is an archive of digital images that he has presented in different ways, including as fine art prints and as a fast-paced video.

Lasting approximately eight minutes, the video contains images that flash to the beat of an electronic rhythm interspersed with an arrhythmic beat. Drawn from a wide range of popular sources, including science fiction and horror films, these varied images include: Mickey Mouse; Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth; images of insects caught with an electron microscope; black athletes, musicians and artists; images of an eclipse; skulls and mutilated bodies. Seen one after the other in this way, radical parallels and contrasts emerge, in which heroes and villains, past and present intertwine in what Jafa has called "frightening entanglements."

Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery 

Arthur Jafa (Tupelo, Mississippí, United States, 1960). From an early age, Jafa began collecting photographs and creating photo books by juxtaposing images from different contexts, periods and historical backgrounds, and has continued to use and perfect this practice.
During his childhood, Jafa watched a lot of science fiction, and one of his decisive experiences was watching Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). Another important source of inspiration is the legendary trumpeter and jazz musician Miles Davis. Jafa describes Davis' musical intonation as both voluptuous and austere, an aesthetic that he also brings to his own work.
Jafa was the director of photography for the mythical and dreamlike "Daughters of the Dust" (1991), directed by Julie Dash, which won the Award for Cinematographic Excellence at the Sundance Film Festival. It was the first film by an African-American woman to be distributed throughout the United States. Jafa also worked with Spike Lee on "Crooklyn" (1994) and with Stanley Kubrick on his last film "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999). Jafa has also made his own films, such as the documentary "Dreams are Colder than Death" (2013), which explores what it means to be black in the USA and reflects on the arrival of Martin Luther King.
Jafa's breakthrough into the art scene came with "Love is the Message, The Message is Death" (2016), which was released a few days after the U.S. presidential election. The work is a seven-minute video set to Kanye West's gospel-inspired song "Ultralight Beam". He has also produced music videos for artists such as Solange, Kanye West and Jay-Z, earning a name for himself among a young audience.
Jafa’s films have garnered acclaim at the Los Angeles, New York and Black Star Film Festivals and his artwork is represented in celebrated collections worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Tate, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The High Museum Atlanta, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Stedelijk, LUMA Foundation, The Perez Art Museum Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
Jafa has had recent solo exhibitions of his work at the Pérez Art Museum Miami; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark and LUMA Arles, France. In 2019, he received the Golden Lion for the Best Participant of the 58th Venice Biennale “May You Live in Interesting Times.