Carlos/Ishikawa in Whitechapel, London, opens a new solo exhibition by Brazilian painter Maxwell Alexandre this week. Titled Black Painter, White Figuration, the show runs from 9 October to 28 November 2026, with an opening reception on 8 October. The gallery has made the exhibition its homepage feature, leading with an installation view of the new works. Alexandre, born in 1990 in Rio de Janeiro and raised in the Rocinha favela, has built an international reputation on large-scale figurative painting that centres Black life, spirituality and the visual language of the favela. His breakthrough series Pardo é Papel — named for the brown kraft paper he paints on — projected scenes of prosperity, celebration and self-possession onto Black communities. Its successor, the Novo Poder sequence, turned fashion and the museum itself into instruments of Black self-esteem, treating access to art's temples as a form of symbolic wealth. The new show's title sets the artist's position against the art world's foundational myth of the neutral white cube. Alexandre has long argued that the contemplation of art as a kind of secular religion was built by and for white viewers; his work reclaims that space for Black bodies and Black joy, insisting on the right to idleness, irreverence and aesthetic pleasure. The London presentation follows a run of high-profile institutional appearances, including a 2022 solo exhibition at The Shed in New York and inclusion in that year's Venice Biennale. Alexandre's work has also been presented by Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel and A Gentil Carioca in Brazil. His paintings are held in collections including the Tate in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Inhotim in Brazil.