With Oh God, Teeth in the Dark!, Verena Kerfin Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Berlin by London-born and London-based painter Kofi Boamah. Boamah attended Open School East and later completed the Off-Site Programme at Turps Art School. His paintings examine what he describes as the “inner workings of the human condition”: fear, desire, dependency, aggression and the often absurd ways in which people see themselves. He seeks what he calls a “violent serenity” – a state in which unrest and calm, menace and humour can exist at the same time.

The exhibition brings together small works on paper and card with canvases measuring up to two metres. Boamah works with oil paint, acrylic, oil pastel, crayon and pen. Overpainting, drips, scratches and visible revisions remain part of the finished works. Wide-open mouths, prominent rows of teeth, exaggerated eyes, exposed bodies and ghost-like outline figures appear repeatedly. They seem to laugh, scream, threaten or look helpless – and frequently do all of these things at once.

These figures are not arbitrary inventions. The titles give them roles and place them within more specific situations: Jeremy the Teacher, The Guinness Drunkard, Feral Woman III, The Last Cigarette, Death… and At Odds with the Gods. Other titles introduce religious, philosophical or mythological references, including Christ the Redeemer with Glove, Philosophical Milk II, Lady with Big Cross and Gomorrahish…. Through them, Boamah addresses faith and doubt, intoxication, death, violence, social exclusion and the grotesque aspects of communal life.

Boamah also engages directly with earlier and modern painting. Titles such as Fragments of Goya, After Goya, Distillations of Goya, Man with Head Full of Sky II (After Miró) and Whitie on the Moon (after Colescott & Van Gogh) make these references explicit. Rather than copying his sources, Boamah takes figures, moods and pictorial ideas from them and transforms them through his own raw visual language and distinctly dark humour.