Alexis Preller

Listings(s)

Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows

This retrospective exhibition curated by Karel Nel traces the prolific painting career of this South African Modernist.

Although Preller trained in England and France in the 1930's he was deeply inspired by Southern African cultures and considered his art "rooted in the African soil". This exhibition attempts to make clear the marriage of Preller's European influences and African sympathies.

14 October 2009 - 05 December 2009

'Perspectives 1'

STEVENSON presents the first exhibition in a series titled 'Perspectives', opening up a new aspect of shows at the gallery.

Michael Stevenson dealt extensively in 19th and 20th century South African art in the 1990s, until the opening of the gallery focusing on contemporary work in 2003. Going forward, the gallery will again present periodic exhibitions, titled Perspectives, which offer post-war South African and African works as well as more recent works by contemporary artists.

These exhibitions will be co-ordinated by Darren Levy who is a partner at the gallery. His interest in contemporary art has been long-standing, and his intention is for these exhibitions to have a quiet sensibility linking the works rather than a hard curatorial framework. In this way the viewer can experience the works individually and collectively in a way that is spacious visually and conceptually. Levy writes:

My perspectives are as collector, reader and dealer, and yours may or may not, coincide. Our prisms will be similar and different. I wish to encourage the act of looking and to personally feel the impulses and prompts of the artworks, without any prescriptions. In the words of Helen Sebidi, 'works themselves provide the narrative'.

This first 'Perspectives' exhibition has been built around Albert Adams' triptych South Africa 1958-59 (Deposition), a seminal work in the history of South African art. One has to remind oneself that it was painted 65 years ago because it resonates so strongly with the works of contemporary artists like Wim Botha and Helen Sebidi. To this end, there are works by Penny Siopis, Alexis Preller, Berni Searle, Guy Tillim and Natasja Kensmil that also allude to liminal realms on the threshold of existence, and experiences and states we can sense but seldom explain.

22 July 2014 - 23 August 2014