theCOart prides itself on exhibiting “National Identity”, works in a range of media, seeking to provoke cross-disciplinary debate on South Africa multicultural identity. Although practices, processes and personal philosophies may differ, all the artists have a common goal: to create relevant and technically proficient art.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS:
• ZANELE MUHOLI
• ROGER BALLEN
• ANTON KARSTEL
• MIA CHAPLIN
• BRETT MURRAY
• STEVEN COHEN
• DIANE VICTOR
• WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
• MATTHEW HINDLEY
• NORMAN CATHERINE
• CONRAD BOTES
• CHRISTIAAN DIEDERICKS
• BASTIAAN VAN STENIS
• RUHAN JANSE VAN VUUREN
• ELIZABETH BALCOMB
• RUAN HUISAMEN
• PIERRE LE RICHE
• ALEXANDER KNOX
CURATERS STATEMENT: One of our deepest needs is for a sense of identity, belonging and human attachment. Identity is the way we perceive and express ourselves. Factors and conditions that an individual is born with; such as ethnic heritage, sex, or one’s body; often play a role in defining one’s identity.
However, many aspects of a person’s identity change throughout his, her or their life. People’s experiences can alter how they see themselves or are perceived by others. Conversely, their identities also influence...the decisions they make: Individuals choose their friends, adopt certain fashions, and align themselves with political beliefs based on their identities.
The era of Apartheid in South Africa came to an end with the first free elections in 1994. Since then, visual art has played an instrumental role in the process of societal change: the quest for a new national identity is vividly reflected in the diversity of contemporary South African art.
The artists in this exhibition use their work to express, explore, and question ideas about identity. Therefore, it is not simply what we see, but a way of seeing. We see it with our eyes but interpret it with our mind and ascribe values to Identity for intangible spiritual reasons. Identity is important in art for expressing a meaningful understanding of who we are. If you’ve not been honest with who you are, your work will not carry the impact that it needs to cause any level of response in your viewers.
OFFICIAL ARTWORK FOR THIS EXHIBITION: Ruhan Huisamen – “Ship of Fools”
ARTIST BIO’S:
Zanele Muholi (b. 1972 Durban, S.A). A photographer and self-proclaimed visual activist, Zanele Muholi explores Black queer identity in contemporary South Africa. Muholi first rose to prominence with their series “Faces and Phases,” for which they shot hundreds of sensitive portraits of women, many from South Africa, and challenged the country’s accepted rhetoric that homosexuality is un-African. The Durban-born, Johannesburg-based artist has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, Fotografiska in Stockholm, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, among other institutions. Muholi represented South Africa at the 2013 Venice Biennale and showed as part of the international exhibition in 2019. Muholi also delved into self-portraiture with their “Somnyama Ngonyama” (“Hail the Dark Lioness”) series, which explores themes of racism, sexuality, and the politics of possessing a Black body.
Roger Ballen (b 1950 – USA-SA) Roger Ballen has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the past three decades. His black and white photography has shifted from an early focus on documentary and photojournalism—such as the 1994 series Platteland: Images From Rural South Africa, which depicted the poor and socially outcast—to staged, painterly compositions of private, surreal worlds, many without human subjects. In the 2009 series ”Boarding House, animals, wall drawings, and objects like furniture and electric wire (a reappearing visual) combine to yield ambiguous and discomfiting images, recalling artists such as Diane Arbus.
Anton Karstel (b.1968 – Pretoria, S.A.) Karstel is a poignant voice in the South African fine art landscape. His unique style, and the manner in which he portrays historical events showcases his profound insight and the mastery of his art. His works, imbued with subtle colour and purposefully placed marks, move the viewer on a threefold level – they are aesthetically lingering, emotively resounding and intellectually stimulating. His style has the effect of a certain ‘hinting towards’ – the multiple layers of his works (whether they be his paintings, installations or photography) invite the viewer to immerse themselves in what it is that they are seeing. As a result, the viewer challenges their understanding of what it is that they are seeing. Small details evoke desire, respect and interest – his works are objects of beauty and are truly awe-inspiring. But the movement of the works is captured in the vibration of the subject matter. Karstel reminds us that everything that we see or seem is underpinned by history. We can only exist in a space because we have acknowledged the process of becoming the being. He acknowledges the moments that define us, the history that shapes us and the emotional (and visual) resonance of the relationship between the two.
This relationship is a truly enticing brutal romanticism. The contemporary value of his work is finely balanced by the critical understanding thereof. Art is a mirror, and Karstel is the finely polished glass that shows us the innermost parts of ourselves without judgement. He leaves that to the viewer. His place in the creation of a socially shared memory is truly invaluable. Karstel’s style is classically rooted in the intense atmospheres of historical masterpieces, but has a fresh current of relevance today. From his portraits to his abstract works, the viewer is invited to get lost in an eternal moment that shifts in interpretation as we embrace our subjective understanding of reality.
Mia Chaplin (b.1990 – Cape Town, S.A.) is a painter who lives and works in Cape Town. Working in oil on canvas and paper, her highly expressive works are characterised by their rich impasto surfaces and visible brushstrokes. Chaplin’s most recent works emphasize a muted colour palette of pink fleshy tones and golden highlights. Consisting of still lifes, figure studies and landscapes, her work seems to meditate on the familiar. Her loose, erratic style of painting – synonymous with that of the impressionists – is intuitive, heightening the emotionality of her pieces. They communicate a sense of estrangement; reflecting a detachment between the self and her surroundings. Her works sway between voyeurism and intimate interaction, while remaining consistently self-referential.
Since completing her BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2011, Chaplin has hosted four solo exhibitions, Mouth (2018), Under a Boiling River (2017) and Binding Forms (2016), with WHATIFTHEWORLD and most recently, Underbelly (2019), with No Man’s Art Gallery in Amsterdam. She has furthermore extended her painting practice into printmaking, hosting a mini-exhibition of monotypes from the series, The Making of a Sharp Blade (2017), in collaboration with Warren Editions, Cape Town. Chaplin has completed artist residency programmes at Cité Internationale Des Artes in the Marais district, Paris (2018), Nirox Arts Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa (2016) and at OBRAS Foundation in Alentejo, Portugal (2015).
Brett Murray (b. 1961 – Pretoria, S.A.) is a South African artist mostly known for his steel and mixed media wall sculptures. Murray has a master’s degree in fine art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, 1989. Referred to by critic Brenda Atkinson as "the dark prince of South African pop (art), Murray is one of the country’ most popular artists, often using easily recognisable media images with the addition of a subversive and bitterly funny twist. Murray’s work addresses the wars of the cultures, the clash between Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism, the old and the new South Africa. “With my work I hope to critically entertain. Through satirical and tragic reflections on South Africa, I hope to shift people’s perspectives and change people’s minds, indulgent, arrogant and pretentious as this might sound," he says. More recently, his work has explored his own personal experiences and identity. Murray was also the founder of the sculpture department at Stellenbosch University.
Steven Cohen (b. Johannesburg – 1962, S.A.) Cohen lives in Lille, France. He is a visual and performance artist, staging interventions in the public realm as well as in gallery and theatre spaces.He has performed extensively on the festival circuit, at such prestigious venues and events as the National Opera of Bordeaux; Festival d’Automne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival; the National Arts Festival in Makhanda; Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris; Montpellier Danse; Festival d’Avignon; Munich Opera Festival, Bavarian State Opera; Festival Escena Contemporánea, Madrid; Bozar in Brussels; Oktoberdans, Bergen, Norway; and Canadian Stage, Toronto.
Cohen participated in the 11th Havana Biennale (2012), and the first Aichi Triennale in Japan (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Plus que parfaits (”More than perfect”), Opéra de Bordeaux, France (2020); IncarNations: African Art as Philosophy, BOZAR Centre for Arts (2019); Lignes de vies – une exposition de légendes, Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (2019); the EVA International, Irish Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018); Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, Seattle Art Museum and Brooklyn Art Museum, USA (2015-16); Chercher le garçon, Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France (2015); Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier in Rio – A Transatlantic Affair, Museu de Arte do Rio (2014); Black Milk: Holocaust in Contemporary Art, Museum for Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark (2014); My Joburg, La Maison Rouge, Paris, and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013); Revolution vs Revolution, Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon (2012); No Fashion, Please: Photography between Gender and Lifestyle, Vienna Kunsthalle (2011); Dada South?, South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2009-10); and Under Pain of Death, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2008).
Diane Victor (b. 1964 – Gauteng, S.A.) is a contemporary South African artist known for her drawings and prints that explore social injustice, war, and corruption. Made using charcoal and candle smoke, her portraits of missing children are among Victor’s most esteemed works. “The portraits are made with the deposits of carbon from candle smoke on white paper. They are exceedingly fragile and can be easily damaged, disintegrating with physical contact as the carbon soot is dislodged from the paper,” she explained. “I was interested in the extremely fragile nature of these human lives and of all human life, attempting to translate this fragility into portraits made from a medium as impermanent as smoke itself.” Born in 1964 in Witbank, South Africa, she went on to receive her BFA from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1986. Inspired by the chaotic scene of Goya and Hieronymus Bosch, Victor’s practice aims at expressing her pessimism towards human society.
The artist resides in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, among others.
William Kentridge(b. 1955 – Johannesburg, S.A.) After studying Political Science at Wits in the late 1970s and the art of mime in Paris in the early 1980s, William Kentridge continually combines these interests in his art. His phenomenal drawing skills were sharpened while studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and, in the numerous stop-frame video animations of the 1990s and the large-scale installations of the early twenty-first century, he dramatically renders the effects of colonialism on the oppressed. Regularly mounting major exhibitions and dramatic productions, locally and internationally, he is the recipient of numerous local and international awards and is the true embodiment of Contemporary African Art.
Matthew Hindley (b.1974 – Cape Town.S.A.) graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, in 2002, where he was awarded the Michaelis Prize.As one of the countries, most recognized younger painters, Hindley’s intense, poetic and delving artworks have featured in various critical and seminal South African exhibitions. Recent solo presentations have included An Everlasting Once at Brundyn + Gonsalves, Cape Town (2011) and Twilight of the Idols at Biksady, Budapest (2013). Hindley’s exhibition of drawings at David Krut Cape Town coincided with the official launch of the book, The Five Magic Pebbles; Other Stories. His new solo painting presentation Resurrection (Der Brennende Wald) was held at Everard Read Cape Town gallery, also in Cape Town in October 2015.
In addition, he has presented at the world renowned Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan (2012) and the Kochi Muziris Biennale, India (2012). In 2014, he worked on a series of paintings inspired by the mythological African tales of South African writer Don Mattera, for a book published by Rhodeworks, in Berlin, Germany. In 2015, his artwork will be part of the imago mundi, Benetton Collection at the Venice Biennale, and his major public sculpture Speak Naturally and Continuously will undergo conservation, in order to have the delicate physical computing piece in permanent running order. The artwork is installed above the entrance of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa.
Norman Catherine (b. 1949 – East London, S.A.). He attended the EL Technical College Art School from 1967-1968 where he completed an art matric. Other than these 2 years at the Tech, he is for the most part self-taught.
Catherine’s art imbibes a dystopian vision of the socio-political landscape that informs his psyche. History, horror, crime, conflict, psychoses, politics, pathologies serve as stimuli for his creative output that vacillates between the macabre and the comic, between a gasp and a giggle. He conveys his cynical vision through a juxtaposition of dark and light sensibilities veering between an internal hallucinatory realm and literal commentary on the material world. There are no easy classifications for the genre of his work suffice to say that he rebels against any dogma or rigid definition.
Conrad Botes (b 1969 – Ladysmith.S.A.)Part of his childhood was spent living in a Department of Water Affairs prefab house on the edge of the Theewaterskloof Dam. His father was a teacher at the local school. Listening to Botes tell stories of the characters that peopled his childhood world one can see how he has been able to develop his eye for targeting the soft underbelly of Afrikaanerdom and by extension South African culture.
With his monoprints, silkscreens, lithographs and other work on paper, Conrad Botes indisputably proves his status as torchbearer of the Post-Pop movement in South Africa. With his icons of atavistic males and females, including the ”tortured soul”; and the femme fatale, the artist mocks conventional notions of individualism and ”humanism”, ranging from romantic love to self-flagellation. Botes has been portrayed in critical literature as the ”posthuman”; artist par excellence (Ashraf Jamal, 2004).
Botes uses Post-Pop’s preference for ”sugary infantilism” to reflect on contemporary society. In such a society, religion is irreverent, violence is desirable, sadism institutionalised, and the individual triumphant in their existential crisis. Botes’s work achieves an interesting fusion of the pastoral with contemporary realities and aesthetics: flowers are often wounds in his works and birds are harbingers of doom.
Detached hands refer to creativity.
Christiaan Diedericks (b 1969 – Potchefstroom – SA) “In my work, time and space appear to dissolve, and an air of conflict erupts. This is often a direct result of a personal aim to calm and disturb at the same time – drawing parallels between the two extremes of utopia and dystopia”.Christiaan Diedericks is a multi-award winning visual artist who is considered by many to be one of the finest print makers to have emanated from South Africa. Christiaan has completed over 50 international residencies and has participated in more than 30 international Biennales.
He has developed a strong and loyal global collector’s base who resonate with his artwork and his voice which speaks against social, political and economic injustice.
His works grace numerous important museum, corporate and private collections including MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art in New York), Ampersand Foundation, Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, France) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Auvergne, France). Christiaan graduated Fine Arts Cum Laude at the North West University and obtained his Masters in Fine Art from the University of Pretoria.
Bastiaan van Stenis (b.1981 – Hermanus.S.A.) Bastiaan, of half Dutch, half South African descent, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. Bastiaan is primarily a self taught artist but at a young age he received private art tutoring and Guidance. After his schooling in 2000, Bastiaan then began to fully dedicate himself to painting and commenced exhibiting his work, an endeavour that he continues to this day. In his own words, “What drives me is the process, the creating, and the creation itself is just another stop on the way. His paintings are expressed using a diverse range of tools and mediums including paint, cloth, encaustic wax, hair, glues and collage. His other projects include taxidermy and sculpture.
van Stenis’ art is captivatingly unique. His style commands the viewer’s attention, and his subject matter absorbs their interest. The figures that are presented both explode from, and dissolve into, the creamy peach oranges, mint greens and Naples yellows that have become a central part of his style.The serenity of these backgrounds contrasts the figures and scenarios that are depicted upon them. van Stenis’ art, inspired by the surroundings that he exists within, is saturated with layers of mixed media. The use of alternative mediums in the works themselves, takes the idea that we are a conglomeration of the influences that define us further. The masterful manner in which he weaves his mediums together becomes significant, and it represents the stitching together of the self in a dreamlike portrayal of reality.
The worlds that van Stenis creates develop with time – small details move to the fore in the viewer’s appreciation of the work.
The childlike brutality of the works evoke a deeply personal understanding of the works for the viewer. They become a personal narrative of growing up and surviving as an individual in the complexities of social codes, expectations and definitions of being. van Stenis challenges this as he depicts seemingly mundane moments with a feelings of simultaneously imploding and exploding – we become what we gather and experience. We carry memories like marks that define us. We collect emotions and they shape our form. Our permanence is found with the smears that share chosen identities. We embrace the classicism of artistry, the modernity of texture, the protest of neo-expressionism and the possibility of more in this style that lies beyond definition.
Ruhan Janse van Vuuren (b.1981 – Amerfoort,S.A.) Janse van Vuuren’s work is visually arresting and it leaves the viewer with an emotive response that permeates through them. His technically apt figures become the canvasses that he plays upon – he adds mundane objects and marks, he takes elements away. These culminate in works that are imbued with nuanced symbolism and meaning. He adds layers of meaning, and the figures become shrouded in them. These elements, which vary between the mundane and the more significant, thus become entwined in the figure’s purpose and interpretation. There is an element of experimentation that heightens the work, and Janse van Vuuren pushes his art beyond the expected to create the unexpected. From the cluttered bases that ground the figures to the objects carried that become their glorious burden, the artist demonstrates the idea of acceptance. It is the notion that the self can only truly be defined when every part that shapes our becoming is accepted.
The works reverberate with a tongue in cheek playfulness that lends itself to black humour. The figures essentially become playthings that shift with the social scenarios and emotive landscapes that they exist within. He experiments constantly, and explores alternative ways of being and becoming as a result. This playful approach to the more serious ideas that he explores (the individual in society, the impact of the past and present on being and the scattered moments that ground us and become our burdens) is inspired by his children. He is intrigued by their honesty that exists without filters, and the voices that are seen in their stories and art as a result of this. This honesty can be interpreted as the closest that we can come to truth.
Elizabeth Balcomb (b. 1974 – Midlands.S.A.) Elizabeth Balcomb is a self-taught South African artist known for her haunting figurative sculptures. Balcomb grew up on the banks of the Umgeni River in the Kwazulu-Natal Midlands of South Africa. Intensely drawn to animals and the natural world, she studied Nature Conservation and spent much of her youth communing with wild creatures, some of them human.
After graduating she worked at various nature reserves in South Africa and Zambia, focussing on environmental education, before becoming a full-time artist in 2010. Her emergance as an artist was during a period when she lived for over a decade in an isolated log cabin with her partner and son. Much of Balcomb’s work is a re- interpretation of classical sculpture using the language of the Renaissance to explore and expose elements of human nature. Her narrative incorporates aspects of dying and rebirth and matters of identity and personal value. She views the artist's path as an existential conundrum, constantly questioning the meaning of her work in relation to her own value as a human being and that of the natural world.
Therianthropes are a recurring theme in her work.Balcomb lives and works between her 2 homes/studios in Durban and in the mist belt forest of Byrne Valley in the Kwazulu-Natal midlands of South Africa. She works in clay and casts limited editions into bronze.
Ruan Huisamen (b.1991 – Cape Town.S.A.) Self-taught artist Ruan Huisamen’s charcoal portraits show a mastering of the human form. His portraits are rendered isolated and largely decontextualized within time and space through their mostly dark backgrounds. The lack of any ornaments, embellishments or even environments creating intensely intimate presences. Huisamen was born in 1991 in Cape Town. He has never received any formal education or training in the traditional techniques of painting and drawing. Most of his earlier works were created using graphite pencil, but he has since converted to charcoal based works. After returning from a three month apprenticeship under Louis Jansen van Vuuren in 2012 he began working full time as an artist and has been nominated for the Absa L’Atelier, Sasol New Signatures, SPI National Portrait and Sanlam Vuleka awards. Huisamen does not simply reproduce a photograph with mechanical exactness.
Halfway through, he discards the photograph and relies on his own intuition, giving more prominence to certain aspects of the drawing, while de-emphasizing others. He creates his works by starting with the traditional grid-form, dividing large drawings into smaller workable grids. "Each individual piece reacts to one another, combining to create the illusion of depth and the three-dimensionality of form,"; states Huisamen.
In today’ depreciation of traditional skills of painting and drawing, Huisamen’s dexterous drawings combine a realistic observation of the human body, both physical and emotional, and dramatic use of lighting and tonality to create works that capture a different, deeper and more profoundly realized experience in relation to the subject.
I feel what’s missing is more slow art, whose adroitness and meticulous attention to detail engenders contemplation. Art that isn’t merely sensational, doesn’t present an obviously transient message and isn’t falsely iconic. Succinctly put art that is axiomatically opposed to our evanescent experiences of mass media, says Huisamen.
Pierre le Riche (b.1986 – Port Elizabeth) is a conceptual artist living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. He primarily works in sculpture and installation, and does not specialise in any particular medium or art-making skill. He has gained recognition for his dynamic use of string and textile work.
He has participated in many projects and exhibitions in South Africa and abroad, and has worked with the likes of Power Play, Trenery, Cartier and Daimler. He has recently showed adaptations of his Rainbow Room installation in the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China; both being part of traveling exhibitions. Le Riche holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art.
Alexander Knox (Cape Town, S.A.) is a portrait and landscape painter based in Cape Town, South Africa. He graduated from Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2015 and he was a top 40 finalist in the Sanlam Portrait Award in 2017 and 2019. His portraits are in the style of Imaginative Realism and mostly depict people living in a post- apocalyptic future (except for commissions). Each portrait is painted from photographic references using multiple layers. He recently started hosting a portrait painting workshop at Ruth Prowse School of Art as well as an online workshop.
ABOUT THECOART:
theCOart is an Art Gallery and Consultancy established in June 2013. The gallery showcases and promote contemporary work by both emerging and established South African artists.
With the ever-changing digital world, we have evolved to a 24/7 borderless online platform without any geographical restrictions. Currently we work in collaboration with South African, Spanish, English and French galleries, studios and artist- residencies.
Our mission is to provide a platform and network for artists to develop and gain greater international reach. We focus on domestic and international exposure of artists and assist galleries, private collectors and corporates with curatorial services.
The gallery prides itself on exhibiting works in a range of media, seeking to provoke cross-disciplinary debate. Although practices, processes and personal philosophies may differ, all the artists have a common goal: to create relevant and technically proficient art.
Entrada actualizada el el 03 nov de 2021
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