What to know
- Blessed and Highly Favoured is a new exhibition by Toronto artist Kalmplex, featuring portraits of celebrities, local figures, and personal connections.
- The show doubles as a live residency, with Kalmplex creating work on-site while incorporating music, DJ-ing, and community activations throughout the run.
- The exhibition marks a milestone for the self-taught artist, who has spent over 20 years documenting Toronto’s cultural scene and is now presenting his first major gallery showcase.
In his new exhibition Blessed and Highly Favoured, a Toronto artist is transforming a Toronto gallery into a bright, intimate tribute to celebrities, local changemakers, and his loved ones; inspired by community and “African royalty.”
Born and raised in Toronto by Jamaican and Ghanaian parents, Kalmplex has spent more than 20 years contributing to the city’s creative scene.
He’s the kind of artist who’s always been in the room, documenting events with his camera, spinning vinyl, painting live, and showing up to multiple openings in a single night. That constant presence has made him a fixture in the city’s culture.
“I’ve been independently documenting art and culture in Toronto for over 20 years, as well as spinning vinyl, painting. I’m vegan. I ride my bike all year round,” he told Now Toronto on Thursday.
“People know me from going to four or five shows in a day, whether it’s art openings, concerts and stuff like that. I’m known around town to let people know what’s going on, so I’ve always been in the know.”
That connection to the city runs through his exhibition at Koffler Arts, in the Koffler 301 space, Blessed and Highly Favoured. While the exhibition centres on his painting practice, it is also an archive, an ode to the city, one that captures the people, histories, and moments that have shaped Toronto.
Each portrait, layered with metallic tones and textured materials, reflects what Kalmplex calls “African royalty,” placing everyone, whether family or celebrity, on the same level.
Throughout the exhibition, Kalmplex’s paintings weave in between personal memory and cultural iconography, often blending the two.
One piece captures a full-circle moment with Lauryn Hill — after seeing her post a photo following a Toronto performance, he painted her the next morning, then brought the piece to a meet-and-greet later that day. Now, the work has evolved again; he painted Hill holding the very portrait he gave her, with Kalmplex standing beside her.
Elsewhere, he reimagines The Last Supper using influential Black women, including Beyoncé, Rihanna and Nina Simone, while other pieces bring together multiple photographs to create imagined scenes of friends gathering in parks or around the city.
In another work rooted closer to home, he paints Eglinton West station — now renamed to Cedarvale — through memory, referencing his upbringing near Marlee and Eglinton and pushing back against what he sees as the erasure of Black communities in the area.
Across the room, portraits of family members, including his mother, great-grandmother and siblings, sit alongside Toronto figures and global celebrities like Drake, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Amanda Parris, all made with gold, copper, and textured materials.
The exhibition marks a milestone for the artist. After years of organizing his own shows and building his practice independently, this is the first major gallery showcase that he didn’t have to put together himself.
“I don’t have anyone looking over my shoulder to tell me what to do,” he said. “I hustled in order to get this gig. Nobody was like, ‘Yo, you should have this.’ I asked for it. I’ve been putting in the work. And finally, I’m getting my flowers, so it takes a little longer, but I’m here.”
The title Blessed and Highly Favoured comes from a phrase he uses daily, a reminder of gratitude and purpose.
“Blessed and highly favoured is my greeting. When people be like, ‘How are you?’ I’m like, ‘I’m blessed and highly favoured.’ That’s how I feel. Every day above ground is a day that you can make something great,” he explained.
That mindset is felt immediately in the space and the art. Painted in bold tones and filled with smiling faces, the exhibition is designed to shift the mood the moment people enter.
“When you come to the show, you’re uplifted because you’re surrounded by people who are smiling,” he said. “We live in a city where eight to nine months of the year it’s gray. So you come here, you liven up yourself, you feel uplifted. I wanted to put that positive sunshine energy.”
His use of gold, copper, and other metallic paints is intentional. It is a way, he explained, to highlight the richness of melanated skin.
“I use the metallic colors to bring out the royalty in people’s skin tones, especially in melanated people, to bring out our royalty,” he says.
For Kalmplex, that representation is personal. He speaks openly about loss and the realities that have shaped his life, and how that influences his work today.
“I want to paint us in a positive light. I know in the news, it’s all sort of negative. I know what that’s like, because two of my brothers got shot and killed… So I know the negativity that we’ve had to deal with, so I want to put some positive energy into stuff that isn’t so happy.”
As part of the exhibition, Kalmplex is also in residency, creating work on-site, DJ-ing and inviting other artists into the space. For him, art is not all about sticking to one medium; it’s all connected.
“It’s all just a part of me. It’s sonic healing, visual healing.”
Still, at the core of everything is Toronto, a city he knows deeply, and one he feels has changed.
“I grew up in [1999-early 2000’s] with a lively Toronto,” he said.
“The Toronto that we have now versus the Toronto I grew up in is not the same. It’s a ghost town now.”
That is part of what makes Blessed and Highly Favoured important today. The exhibition doesn’t just celebrate people; it contains a feeling. One rooted in connection and visibility, in a city where those things can sometimes feel a little difficult to find.
When asked what he hopes people take away from the show, he answered:
“Joy, happiness, love, lighter, refreshed, at home.”
Blessed and Highly Favoured is on now until May 3rd.
