Goodman Gallery
08.06 - 07.07.2022

It’s with a desire for time travel that I rush to David Koloane’s exhibition A Quiet Stature at Goodman Gallery, Cape Town. The exhibition is a tribute to the artist on the third anniversary of his passing on 30 June 2019.

My first trip to Johannesburg was as an Art Writer in Residence at The Bag Factory Artist studios in 2017. Through this behind the scenes access, I was able to see how an artist’s creative process acts as a time machine enabling them to transcend time and space. I’m struggling to remember the few words I shared with Bra Dave when I was introduced to him. He turned from his work with eyes that seemed to remain in other worlds. I asked him what he was making; he might have answered ‘I don’t know yet’ or ‘What do you see?’ 

2017 was a difficult time for me, but through memory it tastes sweet. I wonder about the feeling of Rausch and the transportation Bra Dave must have undergone when creating the works the curator Neil Dundas has selected for A Quiet Stature.

David Koloane, Hillbrow Hustle, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery.

I am not disappointed. Hillbrow Hustle, like jazz or cities, is spontaneous and wild, but not without order or genius. Just like with poetry, Bra Dave appears to be drawing the past through emotion, using colours to illustrate warm and dark energies. Outside the gallery, the hoot of taxis and swoosh of passing cars spill into the drawing. The walls of the gallery space fall off and I’m transported back to my nervous walks down Miriam Makeba and Mahlatini road and deeper explorations of Johannesburg CBD, then deeper into the drawing. It’s like a real 3D world continues past the diameters of paper, but at the same time, everything appears to be melted together. With some active imagination, it’s a real setting sun that is responsible for the warmth of the colours. However, the men in suits and hats and the women in short dresses in the style of a bygone era appear to be stiff, as if caught in something, or holding up the weight of their time. 

Mass Movement IV is a beautiful aerial view of taxi rank. It’s dark and murky, while the line drawings that make up the taxi and rank are light. The figures are like shadows, and the taxis move like cattle. The scene is an essential part of what makes up our cities, with people being transported to different townships, but also trips that go as far as KwaZulu-Natal or the Eastern Cape as Maskandi or Gospel blasts from black speakers. There is one taxi with outlines drawn in green and yellow. This makes me think about the detachment and loneliness I’ve felt in Bree Taxi rank with people speaking languages I could barely understand.I thought, this is life, and I am Johannesburg. But I also felt an uneasiness in the crowd, the fear that it could have carried me into some kind of psychic death if writing about art at The Bag Factory did not connect me to my inner psychic life. I like to think that the colourful taxi is the one that carried me.

David Koloane, Mass Movement IV, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery.

A Quiet Stature also features two channel animated videos: The Takeover and the never seen before Something Out of Nothing. 

Something out of Nothing is a black and white video made from multiple drawings that appear incomplete because of the drawing style which consists of loose sketches, like early sketches for comic scripts or colourless projections of the artist’s inner images. These drawings are in a sketchbook. On the left of the screen, you can see holes where pages were ripped from the binder. The animation combines these drawings to show a setting that cuts from page to page like the opening of a movie. The viewer can appreciate the calmness and silence of the street as we observe wild dogs at play, and one jumps playfully at a passing bird. We overhear conversation as three female figures head towards us carrying something on their heads. A doubled-up figure of a man has big juicy braai chops sizzling in a fire. Somehow, the black visuals and empty white spaces leave space for the imagination to fill in the taste and smell.

David Koloane, The Takeover still, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery.

In contrast, the Takeover makes it appear that Something out of Nothing’s purpose was to draw us into a false sense of security. This animation begins with a circle surrounded by another circle. Rays emit blistering heat before the next scene reveals a township underneath, with three taxis rushing past. Then, there is a pack of dogs, growling so intensely it’s like all the dogs from the previous picture turned into wolves overnight. Takeover undergoes a more linear narration with an introduction, build up and a climax. The wild dogs are facing Soweto Primary School and, in another scene, like Cerberus, three dogs jump through windows into this space that’s supposed to be safe. I consider how the work reflects the chaos that’s always bubbling underneath our ordered lives through illness, job loss or senseless violence. In some scenes, it’s unclear if it’s the kids in the school or a teacher or a woman walking in the street, because sometimes the violence is invisible,  just the sound of tearing flesh and screams. Worse still is when I watch as the dogs terrorize the community. Eventually, after a meeting the community gathers a group with pitchforks, spades and sticks to chase the dogs away.

Then, a sense of calm and conversation as everyone reflects on what happened. I join them. No longer detached.

David Koloane, Untitled (lights in traffic), 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery.