Karter's choice (1972)

Born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1934, and trained at the Chelsea School of Art and later at the Royal College of Art in London, Frank Bowling discovered the landscape paintings of Constable and Turner at the age of 19, and was particularly struck by their atmospheric quality. His first works, initially figurative and infused by biographical and historical reflections, evolved following his arrival in the United States, in New York, in 1966. He then operated a transition towards abstraction, initially retaining figurative elements before breaking free from them to pour paint directly onto the canvas (in the Poured Paintings).
It was during this period that he began producing one of his most iconic series, the Map Paintings, taking as his starting point stenciled outlines of the American, African and Australian continents. These ‘cartographic paintings’—almost abstract fields of colour in which territories emerge—question the discourses, sometimes even the ideologies, at work behind the creation and subsequent dissemination of maps, which carry narratives of domination and displacement.
This series was first shown in 1971 in the solo exhibition dedicated to the artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2003, the Map Paintings were the centerpieces of the exhibition Faultlines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, presented at the 50th Venice Biennale, a moment that marked a turning point in the artist’s career.

In the work Karter’s Choice (1972), composed of areas of black and purple ink dotted with flecks of gold, Australia floats above an unidentified continent whose contours seem to disappear into abstract patterns. Frank Bowling creates light here through the use of spray paint and dissolved acrylic, a technique characteristic of the Map Paintings series, producing an effect akin to watercolour. The impression of iridescent darkness that emanates from the work as a whole, lending it an almost mystical dimension, contributes to the transfiguration of the territories depicted, making this new cartography a tool for a process of decolonial abstraction.

The limited edition of the same name is an Ultrachrome inkjet print produced from the original, as part of a collaboration between Éditions Dilecta and Pinault Collection, on the occasion of the Clair-obscur exhibition in which the artist is participating, at the Bourse de Commerce (until 24 August 2026).