Current Review(s)
The factums of a South African emigre returned
Candice Breitz at Iziko South African National GalleryIs South African art merely the addendum to pudendums and race? One would hardly be at fault for thinking that at least the second part of this was true when listening to some of what Candice Breitz said while talking to a group of young students at her exhibition 'Extra' now on at the National Gallery. ‘White South Africans,’ she stated, at the walkabout, ‘have caused all the problems, as you know’.
Happily for South African art, Breitz’s own work complicates this over-simplified sentiment. In Breitz’s talk she had previously suggested that identity is a complicated and faceted construction. Her intimation seemed to be that identity is relative to the time and to the social forces that are at play, and that these fluid ideas should constantly be under the microscope of reinterpretation.
This is, in fact, one of the conceits that seems to underpin the first of Breitz’s works one encounters at her exhibition at the National Gallery. Ghost Series, a work from 1994, displays the Tipp-exed out bodies of figures on postcards dressed and photographed in a tribal idiom. On one level it questions (or protests against) the heteronymous relationship Europeans have had with African identity. But this whitewashing is not merely a protest against ‘white’ hegemony over African representation. The work goes much further than that, despite Breitz’s own suggestion to the contrary.
25 April 2012 - 22 July 2012
The Woods
Candice Breitz at Goodman GalleryBizarrely enough, Hedy Lamarr wasn’t just a Golden Age screen siren, infamous for simulating orgasm in Gustav Machaty’s Ecstasy in a time when such libertine displays would have got you strung up anywhere outside of California. She was also a gifted mathematician, co-inventing (with George Antheil) spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, both apparently integral to wireless communication.
But, inevitably, Lamarr was more famous for flashing her goodies onscreen and making breathy statements about the glamorous life. Like this pearler: ‘To be a star is to own the world and all the people in it. After a taste of stardom, everything else is poverty.’
23 February 2013 - 30 March 2013
Listings(s)
Babel Series
Candice Breitz at blank projectsOne of Candice Breitz’ early works, ‘Babel Series’ consists of seven constantly stuttering DVD loops, taken from fragments of footage of rock musicians including Madonna, Wham! and Grace Jones to Queen, Prince, Abba and the Police. Played simultaneously in the installation space the voices clamour together to form a cacophonous babble that echoes the biblical story from which the title is drawn, as well as emulating the basic sounds that form language on the brink between meaning and meaninglessness.
The show forms part of ‘Dada South?’ an exhibition curated by Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith at Iziko South African National Gallery, as well as being the official launch of the new blank project space and partnership with the Goethe-Institut.
11 December 2009 - 08 January 2010
Candice Breitz at Espoo Museum of Modern ArtCandice Breitz,(b.1972 in Johannesburg), the South African photographer and video artist now living in Berlin, will bring four key video works to EMMA. Breitz is known for her technically demanding kaleidoscopic, multi-channel video installations which, on the basis of commercial pop culture, study the impact of film- and pop-stars on the life of their fans.
EMMA will show the 14-channel music video King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson) 2005 interpreted by Michael Jackson fans and the 30-channel music video Queen (A Portrait of Madonna) 2005 interpreted by Madonna fans.
24 February 2010 - 06 June 2010
Candice Breitz, 'Same Same' at The Power Plant, Toronto
Candice Breitz at The Power PlantCandice Breitz’s ‘Same Same’ is the artist’s first North American survey exhibition. The show will premiere a series of new works, shot in Toronto, which focus on identical twins. The new series titled Factum was fundamental to the project from the outset, the primary commission in 2009 of a program The Power Plant launched in 2006 to facilitate production of significant new works.
The exhibition’s title derives from an expression of Thai origin: 'Same, same, but different'. Works include, Four Duets (2000), which considers sameness and difference in relation to four renditions of the archetypal love song; Becoming (2003), where Breitz introduces the consumer of popular culture as a subject in the form of herself to explore the way ideals of femininity and desirability are produced through Hollywood 'chick flicks'; and Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley) (2005), the first of a series of multi channel portraits of illustrious pop stars such as Marley, via performances by groups of their fans. The exhibition also presents Him + Her (1968–2008), where Breitz focuses solely on the celebrity icon, and in particular the identification processes that are both produced and enabled through popular cinema, restricting herself exclusively to performances by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.
Factum, named after Robert Rauschenberg’s near-identical paintings Factum I and Factum II, 1957, focuses on identical twins and one set of identical triplets as subjects. Each individual was recorded in isolation from their sibling, but when presented side-by-side one can see the dynamic between their identical appearances. Factum reflects on the relationship between the individual and the double.
19 September 2009 - 15 November 2009
'Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity'
Jo Ractliffe, Guy Tillim, Kay Hassan, Berni Searle, David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng, Hentie van der Merwe, Pieter Hugo, Zanele Muholi, Candice Breitz, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Nontsikelelo Veleko at The Walther CollectionThe Walther Collection opens to the public on June 17, 2010 with 'Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity', introducing works from its African collection. Under the curatorial direction of Okwui Enwezor, the exhibition comprises a series of four projects filling all nine galleries in the three buildings of the new exhibition space in Burlafingen near Ulm, Southern Germany. The exhibition integrates the work of three generations of African artists and photographers with that of modern and contemporary German photography. This combination of African and German works will serve as a model for the kind of curatorial process that animates the character of the collecting program.
Works in the collection include those by Berni Searle, Candice Brietz, Nontsikelelo Veleko, Zanele Muholi, Hentie van der Merwe, David Goldblatt, Kay Hassan, Pieter Hugo, Guy Tillim, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Santu Mofokeng and Jo Ractliffe.
17 June 2010 - 17 October 2010
'Extra'
Candice Breitz at Iziko South African National GalleryCandice Breitz's first show on SA soil for a while, now at the Iziko South African National Gallery includes the major work Factum (2010) and her latest work Extra (2011). This is an important showing of videos and photographic prints from this SA-born Berlin resident, whose career has garnered great international attention for more than a decade.
25 April 2012 - 22 July 2012
'The Woods'
Candice Breitz at Goodman GalleryIn her first solo show at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, Candice Breitz will present 'The Woods' (2012), a trilogy of video installations that takes a close look at the world of child performers and the performance of childhood in order to probe the dreams and promises embedded in mainstream cinema. This new body of work is being shown for the second time internationally after having its debut at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne in late 2012. Consistent with Breitz’s interest in the role that mimicry plays in the forging of selfhood, and with her ongoing analysis of the circular relationship between real life and reel life, The Woods traverses three continents to explore the rituals and conventions governing the on-camera and off-camera personae of professional child actors, as well as adult actors who have become famous playing child roles. The trilogy brings together footage shot in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Lagos, seeking to observe and grasp the aspirational logic that is shared by Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood.
Engaging actors and crews whose creative labour would ordinarily be subsumed into these three giant popular cinema industries, the three chapters of 'The Woods' bring a behind-the-scenes eye to industries that typically prefer to mask their inner workings. As suggested by their titles – 'The Audition', 'The Rehearsal' and 'The Interview' – in each of the three installations making up The Woods, a particular show business ritual becomes the locus of meaning through which to more broadly reflect upon and decode the machinery of mainstream entertainment.
'The Woods' marks the first time that Breitz has cast professional actors – in the past, she has preferred to work with amateur casts. In the case of all three works in the trilogy, the actors were left to make their own choices when it came to self-presentation. All actors appear in clothes and accessories from their own wardrobes and were invited to liberally interpret their roles.
'The Woods' is a new work that has been co-commissioned by ACMI (Melbourne) and the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, Massachusetts).
23 February 2013 - 30 March 2013
'Surfacing'
Liza Lou, Johan Thom, Haroon Gunn Salie, Mounir Fatmi, Alfredo Jaar, Candice Breitz, Kendell Geers , Mikhael Subotzky, William Kentridge and Kudzanai Chiurai at Goodman Gallery
'Surfacing' is a group exhibition which allows for an exploration of the transient space between destruction and (re)construction. The exhibition aims to bring to light the fragments and residues that remain after destruction, and linger beneath a new form. In the preface to the 1961 edition of Frantz Fanon’s 'The Wretched of the Earth', Jean-Paul Sartre writes “violence is man re-creating himself.” Although Sartre speaks of violence as a necessity for overthrowing colonial power, “no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them.” This exhibition understands Sartre’s notion to address culpability, selfhood and violence and trauma involved in the process of becoming, scrutinizing and (re)creating.
22 March 2014 - 19 April 2014
'Other People’s Memories'
Liza Lou, David Goldblatt, Mounir Fatmi, Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg, Candice Breitz, Kendell Geers , Mikhael Subotzky and Moshekwa Langa at Goodman Gallery'Imagine them reconstructing the conceptual framework of our cultural moment from those fragments. What are the parameters of that moment, the edge of that framework?' K Eshun (2003)
'Other People’s Memories' is a group show which explores the ways in which history and memory exist in the process of making, as well as the process of viewing, and by extension, the relationship between the artist, the artwork and the viewer. ?The works included in the exhibition are the result of the artists’ relationship to something which has already happened, so that the artwork becomes an act of insertion, where the artists’ personal history becomes part of the historical, social or cultural moment which is referenced. In some instances the physical presence of the artists and their surroundings is consciously transferred to the artwork.
Participating Artists:
CANDICE BREITZ / ADAM BROOMBERG AND OLIVER CHANARIN / NOLAN DENNIS / MOUNIR FATMI / KENDELL GEERS / DAVID GOLDBLATT/ HAROON GUNN SALIE/ ALFREDO JAAR / MOSHEKWA LANGA / WILLIAM KENTRIDGE / LIZA LOU / MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY /
28 January 2015 - 26 February 2015
'Extra'
Candice Breitz at Standard Bank GalleryCandice Breitz's first show on SA soil for a while brings together major works Mother + Father (2005), Factum (2010) and her latest work Extra (2011). This is an important showing of videos and photographic prints from this SA-born Berlin resident, whose career has garnered great international attention for more than a decade.
08 February 2012 - 05 April 2012
'Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive'
Santu Mofokeng, Andrew Putter, Pieter Hugo, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi, Candice Breitz and Zwelethu Mthethwa at The Walther Collection Project SpaceDistance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive
A three-part exhibition series on photography from Southern Africa, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive presents rarely before seen portraits, albums, cartes de visite, and books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The exhibitions stage a dialogue between ethnographic visions and contemporary engagements with archival imagery and feature recent work African and African American artists. Distance and Desire offers new perspectives on the archive, reimagining its poetic and political dimensions, its diverse histories, and its changing meanings. The series is curated by Tamar Garb.
Exhibitions
The Walther Collection Project Space, New York Part I: Santu Mofokeng and A.M. Duggan-Cronin September 13 - November 17, 2012
The opening exhibition juxtaposes A.M. Duggan-Cronin's 'The Bantu Tribes of South Africa' with Santu Mofokeng's 'The Black Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890-1950.' Duggan-Cronin's eleven-volume study, published between 1928-1954, is renowned and contested for preserving an ethnographic vision of African heritage. In contrast, 'The Black Photo Album,' created in 1997 by contemporary South African artist Santu Mofokeng, is an archive of pictures - commissioned by black South Africans in the early twentieth century - and stories about the subjects, challenging fixed ideas of the "native type" most often associated with photographic representations of Africans.
Gallery Talks:
Jennifer Bajorek on Santu Mofokeng September 25, 2012 at 7pm
Jennifer Bajorek is a lecturer in the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University.??John Peffer on Portraiture in South Africa ?October 23, 2012 at 7pm ?John Peffer is Associate Professor of Contemporary and Nonwestern Art History at Ramapo College.
Part II: Contemporary Reconfigurations
November 30, 2012 - March 9, 2013
This exhibition centers on photography and video art by contemporary African and African American artists who engage critically with the ethnographic archive by parodying, replaying, exposing, and dialoguing with its pictorial tropes and traditions. A stereotype or ethnographic vision in one era may provide material for an irreverent reworking, satirical performance, or elegiac reenactment in another. Addressing how the archive - broadly understood as an accumulation of representations, images and objects - figures in the practices of contemporary artists in Africa, the exhibition features recent work by Sammy Baloji, Candice Breitz, Samuel Fosso, Pieter Hugo, Zanele Muholi, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Andrew Putter, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Gallery Talk:
Awam Amkpa on Contemporary African Photography February 12, 2013 at 7pm
Awam Amkpa is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.
Part III: Poetics and Politics March
22 - May 18, 2013
A presentation of vintage portraits, books, albums, postcards, and cartes de visite, this exhibition reveals the complexity of the African archive, showing works produced in the 1870s to the early twentieth century. Focusing on the pictorial languages deployed by photographers and the contexts in which images are made to circulate, both historically and today, these portraits and figure studies depict Africans predominantly through the filters of European cameras and mentalities. The images make visible both the ideological frameworks that prevailed during the colonial period in South Africa as well as the extraordinary skill of photographers working in the studio and the landscape.
Gallery Talks:
Tamar Garb on 'Distance and Desire' March 23, 2013 at 3pm
Tamar Garb is the Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art at University College London.
Hlonipha Mokoena and Cheryl Finley in conversation on The South African Photo Album April 9, 2013 at 7pm
Hlonipha Mokoena is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Cheryl Finley is Associate Professor of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University.
Symposium Encounters with the African Archive
November 10, 2012, 10am - 5pm
New York University, Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East
Coinciding with the exhibition series, The Walther Collection, in collaboration with New York University and University College London, will present a symposium to explore issues raised by the collection's archive of African photography. This one-day event brings together leading international scholars to exchange, debate and open up the categories often used to describe historic photographs of Africans: colonial, ethnographic, anthropological, artistic. The symposium will provide a space for rethinking the African archive in relation to the concerns of contemporary critics and artists. Participants include Elizabeth Edwards (Durham University), Tamar Garb (University College London), Christraud Geary (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Michael Godby (University of Cape Town), Erin Haney (George Washington University), Salah Hassan (Cornell University), Hlonipha Mokoena (Columbia University), Riason Naidoo (South African National Gallery), Gabi Ncobo (University of the Witswatersrand), Chika Okeke-Agulu (Princeton University), John Peffer (Ramapo College), and Deborah Willis (New York University).
Free and open to the public. To register, email invitation@walthercollection.com.
Catalogue
The exhibition program will be accompanied by the publication of a major scholarly catalogue, 'Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive', edited by Tamar Garb and Artur Walther. Released in March 2013 to coincide with the opening of "Poetics and Politics," the catalogue, co-published with Steidl, will include all exhibited visual material as well as new research generated by the symposium's debate and discussion.
Exhibition
The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany
Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive June 8, 2013 - May 18, 2014
The culmination of the exhibition series will be an expanded presentation of Parts I, II, and III of 'Distance and Desire' at The Walther Collection's museum campus in Neu-Ulm, Germany. For the first time the exhibition will be shown in its entirety, complete with additional contemporary works that will broaden the dialogues and juxtapositions staged in New York.
13 September 2012 - 17 May 2015
'The Character'
Candice Breitz at The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)Candice Breitz: 'The Character' is the first major solo exhibition in Australia by internationally renowned South African artist Candice Breitz.
To what extent are our lives 'scripted' for us by the media we consume and other influences that we encounter in our intimate and social environments? Pop music, cinema and celebrity culture converge in the artist's video installations to reflect on how we create, define and perform our identities in a world of mass media saturation.
Through inventively re-edited interviews, fan performances and montaged cinema sequences, Breitz's works present a new take on contemporary portraiture by creating innovative narratives to probe and analyse individual experience.
A major part of the exhibition will be the inclusion of 'The Woods', a new work making its international debut. Co-commissioned with the Peabody Essex Museum, Breitz's new trilogy focuses on child performers and the performance of childhood to probe aspirations and promises embedded in mainstream cinema.
From adoring Michael Jackson fans re-performing the Thriller album, to in-depth interviews with identical twins and studied re-performances of popular 'rom-com' scenes, Breitz playfully yet astutely investigates the extent to which our lives are constructed by parameters dictated to us by the media, society, and the particular moment in time that we are born into.
06 December 2012 - 11 March 2013
