Archive: Issue No. 129, May 2008

11.05.08 'Disguise' at Michael Stevenson
11.05.08 Peter Schütz and Walter Oltmann at Goodman Gallery Cape
11.05.08 Kevin Brand at Bell-Roberts
11.05.08 Zander Blom at Whatiftheworld / Gallery
11.05.08 'One more day to regret' at the AVA
11.05.08 Brendon Bussy at blank projects
11.05.08 Joan Peeters at Irma Stern Museum

9.04.08 'Reality Check' at Iziko SANG
9.04.08 Themba Shibase at the Photographer's Gallery
9.04.08 'Come Again' at the Michaelis Gallery
6.04.08 'A Lesbian Story' at AVA
6.04.08 Sanell Aggenbach at João Ferreira Gallery
6.04.08 'Lustre dots and more' at 34Long
6.04.08 Pieter Hugo at Iziko SANG
6.04.08 Cecil Skotnes at Iziko SANG
6.04.08 Cobus van Bosch at 34 Long
6.04.08 Zoe Moosmann and Nkoali Nawa at AVA

STELLENBOSCH

13.05.08 Chris Diedericks at the Dorpstraat Galery
11.05.08 'Revisions+' at SMAC

PAARL

10.02.08 Andy Goldsworthy and Ouattara Watts at Glen Carlou

'Disguise: The art of attracting and deflecting attention' is curated by Joost Bosland and marks both the opening of the gallery's new premises in Woodstock and the gallery's fifth birthday celebrations.

The show brings together artists from South Africa, the continent and beyond for whom attracting or deflecting attention is central. In popular culture, the archetypal disguise is Superman's pair of glasses, which turn him into Clark Kent. This particular case reveals something: often that which is disguised is hidden in plain view. Everyone familiar with the movies or comic strips has wondered, at some point, why Lois Lane does not recognise that her two love interests are one and the same. The implications of outward appearance are amplified in the case of Africa and its diaspora because of the historical significance of skin colour. Perhaps as a result, there is a profound engagement with disguise in the work of many artists with links to the continent.

The exhibition explores threads of pageantry, trauma, drag, political pretence, fashion and stealth in the work of, among others, Candice Breitz, David Goldblatt, Simon Gush, Nicholas Hlobo, Pieter Hugo, Lunga Kama, Mustafa Maluka, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Youssef Nabil, Athi-Patra Ruga, Claudette Schreuders and Yinka Shonibare.

Opens: May 15
Closes: July 5

Walter Oltmann, recipient of the 2001 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art and winner of the 2007 Sasol Wax Art Award, exhibits new works employing both human and insect aspects to explore the paradoxes of vulnerability and the monstrous. Oltmann's obsessive explorations of the natural world have resulted in drawings in ink and bleach, and woven wire constructions that reference local craft traditions. Oltmann is a senior lecturer at the Wits School of the Arts, Johannesburg.

KwaZulu Natal-based artist, Peter Schütz, is widely known for his finely carved and painted wood sculptures that present imaginative, witty ruminations on religious, mythological and cultural icons. For this new body of work Schütz draws on a wide range of sources that include Zulu and African Zionist church regalia, beliefs and cosmologies to imbue his sculptures with particular aesthetic forms and spiritual potencies.

While Oltmann often works on a monumental scale and Schütz, by contrast, prefers an intimate approach, both artists are celebrated for their craftsmanship and extraordinary attention to detail and finish.

Opens: May 8
Closes: May 31

Kevin Brand's latest exhibition 'Set the world on fire' consists of unique wall-pieces that explore the boundary between low-relief and painting. Working in such media as painted wood, Perspex, and pressed aluminium, Kevin Brand takes his inspiration from simple every day objects and reinterprets them. According to Paul Edmunds, Brand turns mundane objects into 'sophisticated, evocative, and resonant works of art'. Although suggestive of the sculptural, these multi-faceted works are informed by drawing, and indeed each composition is in fact a drawing that has found its way into materials more often associated with three-dimensional objects. Writing in the exhibition's catalogue, Edmunds notes: 'From the bare minimum of carefully chosen lines Brand manages to coax archetypal images whose simplicity belies their accuracy.'

Early in February, Brand was named recipient of the Mercedes-Benz South Africa 2008 Art Award (formerly the DaimlerChrysler Award) for an Art Project in Public Spaces. Speaking on behalf of the award selection panel, jury-member Bongi Matlau, praised Brand's ability as artist to reference historical events and to 'capture public imagination' through 'materiality, scale and process'. This is Brand's first exhibition since the prize was awarded.

Opens: May 7
Closes: May 31

Zander Blom has been making quite a stir recently. He has been recognised by Frieze magazine for one of the most internationally significant solo exhibitions of 2007, and has also featured on the cover of Art South Africa. In this exhibition he will be showing a set of once-off photographs, drawings, paintings and prints and will be launching his first book, The Drain of Progress - A Catalogue Raisonné that provides a unique view of a stage set upon which Blom's ongoing modernist experiment occurs.

Blom questions the personal relevance and motives of the modernist visual artists before him. How did it feel to be the true 'avant-garde'? Moreover, of what personal relevance is Modernism when viewed as a series of cultural movements that stretch back as far as the 1890's? His investigation of modernism is much like a child being presented with a watch, and in order to understand it - he immediately takes it apart.

Opens: May 1
Closes: May 31

Various exhibitions, events, interventions and intercessions, such as planting an apple tree in Paradise and translating Anton Szandor La Vey's Satanic Bible into Afrikaans have formed part of Gimberg and Nerf's year-long collaboration, the climax of which is the enaction of their latest work, Escape to Robben Island.

'The artists themselves do not motion to put the socially conscious viewer at ease, and it is perhaps the task of this projected viewer to grapple with their own questions of meaning, to interrogate the idea of the hierarchy between the blatantly meaningful (the things we are taught to care about) and the meaningless (the work of the devil). - Ryan van Huyssteen and Francis Burger

Significantly, the exhibition will not display any concrete evidence of the actual journey to Robben Island. The sea-spray, the ebb and flow of the tide, the slap of the paddles as they hit the ocean, the triumph of reaching the shore, the sandy toes ... the power of the fantasy is such that its actuality is unimportant; and such is life. As the psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek so succinctly explains 'what is missed by the cynic who believes only his eyes is the efficiency of the symbolic fiction, the way this fiction structures our reality.'

In 'Buyer and Seller of Souls' Gimberg and Nerf will be calling in debts. Do you owe Gimberg and Nerf anything? Over the past year they have acquired 38 IOU slips, many of these at 'Carpentry 101'. These debts are being called in on May 20.

Visit onemoredaytoregret.blogspot.com

Opens: May 12
Closes: May 30

Event: 10am - 5pmMay 20

'Drawing Machine' is a sound installation and performance piece by Brendon Bussy. Bussy is a Cape Town-based visual artist, electro-acoustic performer and writer. In 2003 he released 'Diesel Geiger' (Open Records). He also runs workshops in spontaneous sound techniques and idea development.

Opens: May 7
Closes: May 31

Dutch artist Joan Peeters has gained a reputation for her often ethereal, postmodern realist paintings of the Karoo landscape. Muted, subtle colours reveal the nature and character of a terrain that is often a dry wilderness, yet always richly textured. The works hark back to a northern romantic tradition that conveys a sense of isolation and reflection.

Peeters received a BAFA from Michaelis, and later completed an MA in Fine Art at Atelier 63 in Holland. She stayed in Holland for the next ten years, developing her painting skills in one of Amsterdam's leading ateliers. Since 2002 she has had four solo exhibitions, and today her work hangs in collections around the world.

Opens: May 7
Closes: May 24

In 2006, Iziko SANG received an invitation from the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, in Germany, to curate an exhibition of contemporary art photography from South Africa. This was exhibited in four German cities, Berlin, Sindelfingen, Bochum and Chemnitz during the course of 2007. 'Reality Check' shows a selection of work from the larger exhibition.

The work of the twelve contemporary photographers and artists shown provides an indication of the diverse practices through which the realities of our radically changing world are explored. Current photographic approaches reveal both continuity in and disjuncture from the documentary tradition that prior to the 1990s relegated alternative and experimental expressions in the medium to the margins. The exhibition demonstrates an engagement with a wide range of concerns and forms: the personal is given new weight, and issues around identity, self-representation and gender are explored alongside landscape and post-apartheid memory.

Artists include Bridget Baker, Lien Botha, Jean Brundrit, David Goldblatt, Pieter Hugo, Santu Mofokeng, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Mikhael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, Andrew Tshabangu and Nontsikelelo 'Lolo' Veleko.

Opens: March 11
Closes: May 25

These recent works portray a wide subject matter, ranging from depictions of juxtaposed urban and rural architecture to expressively rendered portraiture of both ordinary and extraordinary individuals. The underpinning theme or inspiration is a critique on hybrid culture. These works are also informed by Shibase's experiences as a young black male living in an urban environment, an environment politically charged with questions of identity, place, ownership, and belonging.

Themba Shibase is a Durban based artist and lecturer ñ this is his first solo exhibition in Cape Town. He is an MTN New Contemporaries 2008 nominee.

Opens: April 16
Closes: May 24

'Come Again' is an exhibition of work by Masters students at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. The exhibition shows a diverse range of themes and media by a group of dynamic emerging artists. Artists include Jake Aikman, Jennifer Altschuler, Stuart Bird, Justin Brett, Pieter Cilliers, Renee Holleman, Fabian Saptouw, David Scadden, Linda Stupart.

Opens: April 21
Closes: May 9

This exhibition and workshop component create a platform for debate and discussion challenging discrimination and the stigma of same-sex relationships in public forums. Jean Brundrit exhibits Out in the archive. As there are few photographs of lesbians, historic or contemporary, in the public domain in South Africa, Brundrit creates a fictional visible public record, or archive, of lesbian lives over the last 165 years - since the invention of photography. This series of self portraits is in response to the erasure of lesbians from official records in South Africa.

Some of the photographs donated to the Gay and Lesbian Archives (Gala) at Wits have lengthy public access embargos, while other photographs have been altered to conceal the identity of the subject. This is to protect lesbians from discrimination in what is still perceived as a homophobic environment. The photographs are printed using different historic printing techniques.

Lizeka Tuswa, Zodwa Nkwinika, Musa Ngubane, Phumla Rose Masuka, Bongiwe Louw, Keba Sebetoane, Mmapaseka Letsike and Nokuzola Raqola have worked with Brundrit and Zanele Muholi , workshopping the photographic process to create images that negotiate the theme, adding another layer to the exhibition's dialogue with the viewer.

Opens: April 21
Closes: May 9

Sanell Aggenbach's work deals primarily with the intricate intersection of history and private narratives, by considering the process of recall and interpretation. For the past two years her focus has mainly been on found images of formal portraiture and ghostly archived negatives. In this new body of work she investigates translucent film as a medium for recounting half-truths by referencing tampered photographic film, intimate portraiture and the ever-eluding grasp of sensation.

Instead of focusing on the 'accurate' form of photography, as a mimetic form of representation, Aggenbach prefers to contemplate paintings' inaccurate and misleading record of reality. The tactical function of intimate photography as sensual trigger, as opposed to pragmatic rendering, becomes paramount. The paintings which form part of 'Sub Rosa' are not depictions of individuals, but rather images of images. Distortion becomes an essential part of the process where the muffled identity of the sitter dilutes into abstraction.

This is Aggenbach's first solo exhibition in Cape Town since the critically acclaimed 'Fool's Gold' in 2005. Her explorative work has secured her many achievements: winner of the 2003 Absa LAtelier, selection for the 3rd Brett Kebble Awards 2005, and more recently, finalist in the Spier Contemporary Art Awards 2007. Aggenbach participated in 'Turbulence: Art From South Africa' in Austria in 2007. Her work forms part of numerous public collections including the Absa Collection, Spier Collection, Anglo Gold South Africa, Hollard Collection, Sasol Collection, Didata, SABC, and the Red Bull Collection, Salzburg, Austria.

Opens: April 30
Closes: May 31

In addition to new work by renowned artists like Takashi Murakami, whose work features regularly at 34 Long, the show introduces locals to the work of Japanese grande dame Yayoi Kusama. Japan's greatest living artist, a proto-feminist icon, compulsive-obsessive, reclusive, instantly recognisable: Yayoi Kusama has been called many contradictory things. Most of these monikers, and many others, accurately describe different facets of this remarkable artist whose long career has spanned most of the 20th century and continues into the 21st.

She was born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929 but left for New York in the 50s, where she enthusiastically joined the art scene, causing a furore with her nude public performances. She befriended many American artworld luminaries, including Georgia O'Keefe with whom she corresponded for years, Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell. She exhibited with Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, quite comfortably fitting into a pop mould. Kusama abruptly returned to Japan in the 70s and since then has chosen to live in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital not far from her studio. For a period it seemed that the art establishment had forgotten her, but she has returned by creating flowers, dots, pumpkins, more flowers, more dots, more pumpkins of infinite beauty and luminosity.

Opens: April 15
Closes: May 17

Pieter Hugo's Standard Bank Young Artist Award exhibition 'Messina/Musina' opened at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in June 2007 and has since moved to major centres throughout South Africa. Musina, the subject of these captivating images, is the northernmost town in South Africa, on the Zimbabwean border. Formerly known as Messina, its name was changed to correct a colonial misspelling of the name of the Musina people who previously lived there. Musina attracts a conglomeration of disparate peoples drawn to the town by the opportunities offered; be they the prospect of work in the mines or on the farms, policing the porous border, smuggling contraband and alien immigrants, or prostitution.

Hugo's photographs of individuals, families, interiors and landscapes reflect on the wounds and scars of race, class and nationality that persist here. The circumstances of Musina can also be seen as broadly reflective of any community that is confronted by transition.

Hugo, who is self-taught, was born in 1976 and grew up in Cape Town. The recipient of numerous accolades, he has held solo exhibitions both locally and abroad.

Opens: March 22
Closes: May 4

Whilst Skotnes is undoubtedly an icon of the South African art world, this exhibition moves beyond the artist's public face to reveal a more personal view, focusing on such aspects of his extensive output as his drawings, cartoons, watercolours, prints and works of art on paper. Also on display are a number of letters and documents collected over five decades as well as objects, personal memorabilia and a collection of objects from Skotnes' home and studio.

Skotnes played an important pioneering role in art education in South Africa. He was highly involved with the Amadlozi group that sought to work at the intersection of African and European art. He was generous towards, and nurturing of, young artists. For many years, his Johannesburg home served as an 'open house' and hub for artists from different parts of the city and, indeed, the world.

In Cape Town, this spirit of creative hospitality continued. The exhibition therefore offers insight into the country's creative community, of which Skotnes was such an integral part, and highlights the many ways in which he helped shape a vibrant period in South African art history.

Opens: April 19
Closes: June 18

Whether observed from a distance of several kilometres or from street level, a similarity in form often appears in cities - squares, rectangles, triangles, circles and spheres - as well as in the composition of these elements. In this painting project entitled 'City', colour, conspicuous in its absence, accentuates shape and tonal contrast. Cobus van Bosch explores the fascinating geometry of two urban landscapes in South Africa - Cape Town (where he lives) and Johannesburg - and that of Paris, where he enjoyed a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in 2005.

This series of paintings continues Van Bosch's exploration of aspects of urban environments (as in 'March', his 2007 exhibition at 34Long) and extends his central themes of pattern and topography. Previous bodies of work include designs of cast iron manhole covers and topographical maps constructed from bone fragments.

Opens: April 15
Closes: May 17

Zoe Moosmann shows 'The Great Equaliser' on the Artsstrip. These black and white photographs expose the last days of old-age, of the 12 men photographed, six are now dead. The photographs were taken at two frail care homeless shelters - one in Woodstock run by the Night Haven and one in Faure run by The Ark. Moosmann looks at destitution, old age and displacement across class, culture and race. These men are facing the end days of their lives, they come from diverse backgrounds and histories. Most are without family and are anonymous and alone. They do not have any of their past life recorded, so find it difficult to get identity documents and thus pension or disability grants.

Nkoali Nawa returns to the AVA with his solo exhibition entitled 'Space' in the long gallery. Nawa, born in South Africa in 1965, holds a National Diploma in Fine Art (1998) and a B Tech Fine Art (2001), both from the Technikon Free State in Bloemfontein. Nawa's large charcoal works explore the everyday experiences of mineworkers in Welkom.

Opens: April 21
Closes: May 9

Much acclaimed, award-winning artist Chris Diedericks will be bringing his exhibition 'Indigo Boy' to the Dorpstraat Galery on 10 May 2008 after showing at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery and before travelling to New York later in the year. Chris Diedericks presents 'Indigo Boy' to Cape audiences after showing at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery and before travelling to New York later in the year. 'Indigo boy' is an ongoing collaborative project, incorporating photography, digital web-based art and traditional printmaking. As an ongoing process it has travelled to such diverse places as New York, Morocco, Spain and Zanzibar. Largely inspired by Robert Bly's 'Iron John', the resulting work is a richly textured collage of imagery, text, photographs and drawing which explores notions of identity and gender, specifically around ideas about masculinity. Each work takes on the appearance of a diary page or an extract from a travel journal relating personal experience, constant questioning and explorations. Idea and image are in constant dialogue raising questions rather than giving answers and challenging the viewer through the open-endedness of meaning, context and interpretation.

In 2000 Diedericks completed his Master's in Fine Arts with a practical Cum Laude at the University of Pretoria. He lived and worked in New York for four months in 2006 after receiving the prestigious Ampersand Foundation Fellowship and has lived and worked at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris where he has also exhibited. Some of his numerous awards and achievements include winning the Kanna Award for Best Visual Artist at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in 2006 and being awarded a residency at Gallery 24 in Berlin for 2008.

Opens: May 10
Closes: June 17

'Revisions+' is a sequel to the exhibition 'ReVisions: Expanding the Narrative of South African Art', the first major public showing of the Campbell Smith Collection, which opened at the Iziko South African National Gallery in October 2005. Bruce Campbell Smith's primary interest is in collecting and retrieving the work of historically-neglected black South African artists whilst also adding strategic and relevant works by white South Africans. He sees his collection as merging two previously separated but complementary art historical strands into a single, integrated one.

'Revisions+' is a new and different show which highlights works not previously exhibited, as well as new additions made to the Collection since 2005. Some of the renowned artists featured in this new exhibition and catalogue include Willie Bester, Gerard Bhengu, Peter Clarke, Dumeli Feni, Trevor Makhoba, Joseph Manana, George Pemba, Gerard Sekoto and Sithembiso Sibisi.

The new publication written by Hayden Proud is entitled ReVisions+: Expanding the Narrative of South African Art. Co-published by SMAC Gallery and UNISA Press, it covers the new works added to the Campbell Smith Collection since the initial exhibition in 2005. It also contains biographies of a number of new artists who are now represented in the Collection, as well as in-depth discussion of newly-acquired works by artists already represented in the initial publication.

Opens: April 25
Closes: May 25

Land artist Andy Goldsworthy has travelled to South Africa to oversee the installation of three of his pieces into the collection of the Swiss magnate Donald Hess, owner of Paarl winery Glen Carlou. Goldsworthy is a world famous environmental sculptor who explores and experiments with various natural materials such as leaves, stones, wood, sand, clay, ice and snow. The seasons and weather determine the materials and the subject matter of his projects. With no preconceived ideas of what he will create, he relies on what nature gives him. One piece Hard Earth was originally created by plastering the inside of a room with white clay which as it dried and cracked began to take on a vastly differently aspect. Hard Earth and other Goldsworthy pieces in the Hess collection will be going on show.

Alongside Goldsworthy, a key diasporan artist, Ouattara Watts, will also be showing work at Glen Carlou. Watts has been featured in a number of blockbuster shows including Okwui Enwenzor's 'The Short Century', 'Documenta' in 2000, the Whitney biennale and the Venice biennale. On display will be 11 of his paintings and watercolours from 1992 until 2006.

Opens: January 29