Curators are increasingly key players in South Africa's art scene. A good curator goes beyond merely creating moments of resonance between artworks on a show: instead, the astute curator has something of a divining ability, determining to a certain extent which strands of contemporary art are significant enough for elucidation from the clutter, and giving focus to them.

Noteworthy of both curators in this month's ARTBIO is that they operate within the commercial arena of fine art, and yet they retain the ability to create shows that challenge expectations and subtly shift the directions of contemporary South African art.

David Brodie and Brenton Maart worked together at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) from 2002 to 2004, where they reintroduced a much-needed critical edge and youthful vigour into the institution's programme. Since then, their paths have diverged, Maart moving to Durban to head up the KZNSA Gallery, while Brodie has gone from a long stint as a curator at the Goodman Gallery to opening his own Johannesburg venue, Brodie/Stevenson.

Maart's speciality lies not only in attracting strong shows to the oft-quiet Durban art scene, but extending the reach of his gallery to include an important programme of public contact events, from talks and seminars by visiting luminaries to hosting and facilitating art writing workshops.

Brodie, meanwhile, has deftly jostled a space for himself on the competitive Johannesburg scene in a short time, hosting a series of smart shows and luring the cream of the city's young contemporary artists to his stable. His recently-established partnership with Cape-based heavyweight Michael Stevenson is testimony to the kind of attention Brodie is attracting.

Maart's intellectual rigour is evident in the quality of shows he has curated. A recent success being 'Production Marks: Geometry, Psychology and the Electronic Age', an exhibition analyzing the application of chaos in South African contemporary art. Commissioned by and opened at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, 2008, and travelling to the KZNSA Gallery, Durban and the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg, during the same year, the exhibition included work by Zander Blom, Marco Cianfanelli, Paul Edmunds, Retha Erasmus, Stephen Hobbs, Doung Anwar Jahangeer and Andrew Verster.

Brodie's notable exhibitions have included 'The Trickster', 'Impossible Monsters' and Lawrence Lemaoana's solo show 'Fortune Telling in Black, White and Red'.

Brenton Maart:
'The driving motivation behind my curatorial practice is identifying and exhibiting things I haven't seen before. In a solo exhibition of new work this may include the use of new material or the new use of a material. It could also include the artist saying something new or saying something in a new way. In the electronic and information age of hyper-glut, I find it refreshing to highlight the subtlety of inflection as source of interest, enthusiasm and excitement.

'With group shows I tend to look for new relationships. I am interested in how, by placing very different work together, narratives emerge that highlight usually invisible threads. This would be the visual culture equivalent of interdisciplinary practice, a methodology I find indispensable in my work.'

David Brodie:
'My curatorial practice is not driven by any overarching political belief or cultural strategy - I am interested in working with a range of artists who, to my mind, are producing work that is challenging, significant and provoke debate in any number of ways. With group shows I am interested in exploring themes I find intriguing (e.g. contemporary tricksters, versions of monstrosity), and I look for ways of expanding an understanding of a given concept by pairing up emerging artists with established names - I am often amazed by the energy that is generated when there are unexpected pairings and juxtapositions of works. With regards to the solo shows, I focus on artists whom I believe are making work that I believe should be seen - artists who are working in their own language, or who are bending and shaping known languages in an unexpected and exciting direction.

Brodie's current show is a two-part exhibition, entitled 'Self/Not-self', featuring work by artists such as Penny Siopis, Pieter Hugo, Lerato Shadi, Nandipha Mntambo and Wilhelm Saayman. The show considers various incarnations of the notion of self-portraiture, and how the notion of self vs. the obscuring of that self through disguise, masquerade and play problematises the fixity of self-conceptualisation.

Having just finished hosting a residency/gallery invasion from good-humoured sculptor and videographer Cameron Platter, and packing away the last of the 2008 Sasol Wax Art Award which travelled there in early 2009, Maart's KZNSA is welcoming the staff of the Durban University of Technology's Department of Fine Art and Jewellery Design for a show entitled 'New Connections'. The list of artists on this exhibition reads like a mini-who's who of KZN art, including the likes of Andries Botha, Bronwen Vaughan-Evans, Greg Streak and Themba Shibase. The exhibition explores a variety of responses to social realities and situations.

Brodie counts as a formative experience his work as co-curator on 2005's 'Personal Affects'. The exhibition, curated for New York's Museum for African Art and St. John the Divine Cathedral, allowed him to develop relationships with certain artists which he has maintained as a gallerist, including Wim Botha, Claudette Schreuders and Sandile Zulu. Brodie says of the exhibition, 'It was the first opportunity that I had to interact and engage with a non-South African institution over an extended period of time - and this, together with the opportunity to work with an exceptional group of co curators and sponsors, made for an amazing, and massively educational, experience.'

Maart's 2008 travelling exhibition mentioned earlier, 'Production Marks: Geometry, Psychology and the Electronic Age', displayed the depth of his intellectual enquiry. The exhibition catalogue explains that despite looking at chaos in the work of the artists included, the curatorial brief avoided the easy route of bemoaning the dissolution of structures. Rather, 'the exhibition illustrates that entropy - the physical principle of constant collapse - provides the building blocks for assembly into new forms. It is this celebration of the unstable that ultimately allows for continual and creative construction. In essence, the exhibition is an acknowledgement of inevitable anarchy, and a celebration of the new forms that grow from the rubble.'

Maart's previous achievements have included 2002's 'Sharp: The Market Photo Workshop', which considered trends in South African photography over the previous 14 years. The show included work by luminaries such as David Goldbatt, Tumelo Mosaka, Jenny Gordon, Cedric Nunn, Jodi Bieber, Nontsikelelo Veleko and Themba Shibase.

Brodie counts as a personal milestone the curated group show with which he opened his gallery in 2007, 'Impossible Monsters'. The show was important in that it collected work by established SA artists Penny Siopis, Wim Botha and Nicholas Hlobo with works by some of Johannesburg's rising stars Lawrence Lemaoana, Lester Adams and Reshma Cchiba. The curve ball on this show, and a compelling one at that, was the inclusion of a work by Spanish artist Carlos Aires.

Brodie says he is excited about all of his upcoming exhibitions for 2009. These include solo shows by Mary Wafer, Zanele Muholi and Nandipha Mntambo, and a group show by tricky trio Avant Car Guard. Sooner than these, Brodie will be be present at the Joburg Art Fair of 2009, his second year at this event.

Upcoming shows Maart is curating for the KZNSA include 'Harbour', a group show with artists including Doung Jahangeer, Andries Botha, Tracy Payne, Greg Streak and Marco Cianfanelli; a retrospective exhibition of work by Jeremy Wafer, a Penny Siopis survey entitled 'Red'; two-person exhibition by Hentie van der Merwe and Walter Oltmann; and The KZNSA Booth at the Joburg Art Fair, which Maart says will focus on large-scale sculpture.

David Brodie

2007-present Director, Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg
2004-7 Curator, The Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
2002-4 Curator of Contemporary Collections: Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg
2001-2 The Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
2000-1 MA (FA), University of the Witwatersrand
1996-9 BA(FA), University of The Witwatersrand

Brenton Maart

2007-present Director: KZNSA Gallery, Durban
2007 University of the Witwatersrand: M.A. in Fine Arts
2004 Exhibitions Curator: Johannesburg Art Gallery
2003 David Krut Publishing: Course in Art Critical Writing
2001 University of the Witwatersrand: Master's course in animation techniques
2000 Market Photography Workshop: Advanced Course in Documentary Photography
1999 University of the Witwatersrand: Masters Course in Queer Film Theory and Practice
1996-7 Projects Officer: Handspring Trust for Puppetry in Education
1995-6 Editor: Maskew Miller Longman
1994 Lecturer in Biotechnology: Rhodes University
1992 Researcher: Institute for Water Research