Current Review(s)
'Transcend'
Diane Victor at Goodman GalleryOn visiting Diane Victor’s solo exhibition 'Transcend', which runs at the Goodman Gallery in Parkwood until May 22, I was struck for some time by a verbal paralysis. I don’t mean that I was ‘speechless’, in the colloquial sense. Of course Victor’s pictures are always remarkable; they always induce in me some feeling of awe and jealously, whether or not I happen to like them. But what made it so difficult to catch any words that I could pin to them is, quite simply, that they are pictures, and, for whatever reason – postmodernism, modernism, envy, the imperatives of newspapers – a critic’s default position on pictures is that they are tiring and impenetrable. The artist herself conceded the trouble pictures make when she shared with the audience at her walkabout of 'Transcend' on May 1, ‘One of my worst habits is that I’m a picture maker.’
15 April 2010 - 22 May 2010
Listings(s)
'Transcend'
Diane Victor at Goodman GalleryIn this exhibition of new etchings, lithographs and drawings, Diane Victor moves into new terrain, testing new ideas and imagery through a familiar visual language. Some highlights of this exhibition are long-awaited additions to Victor's 'Disasters of Peace' series and a major new body of work titled 'Birth of a Nation'. In this series Victor embarks on a redrawing of classical artworks viewed at museums while traveling in Europe.
The artist will give a walkabout of the exhibition on Saturday April 24 at 10.30am.
15 April 2010 - 22 May 2010
'MATRIX'
Maja Maljevic, Mary Wafer, Diane Victor, Senzo Shabangu, Deborah Bell, Stephen Hobbs and William Kentridge at David Krut ProjectsDavid Krut Projects Cape Town is pleased to present 'MATRIX', an exhibition of editioned works from the David Krut Print Workshop (DKW) that sheds light on the processes of printmaking. The selection of works present a range of different intaglio and relief printing techniques and are exhibited alongside the plates that were used to make them and, in some cases, the trial proofs that show the development of the work.
Prints, unlike paintings or drawings, generally exist in multiple examples. They are created by drawing a composition not directly on paper but on another surface, called a matrix, and then, by various techniques, printing that image on paper. The matrix (from the Latin word mater, meaning mother) can be made out of a number of things – a woodblock, a metal plate, a lithographic stone or a mesh screen for example. At DKW, etching (on copper plates) and relief printing (on woodblock and linoleum plates) are used most frequently. Artists in studio have the opportunity to work with a master printer, who helps to achieve the marks the artists want by guiding the artists in the manipulation of the matrix. The job of the collaborating printer, ultimately, is to build the confidence in artists that allows the way they see the world to come through their hands, even in a medium using techniques they may be unfamiliar with and taking the transformative nature of the press into account. Printmaking is the only medium in which the process of artists’ image creation is revealed, also to themselves – when a proof is pulled off the press, the artist is also seeing the result for the first time, along with everyone else. Consequently, the print workshop is a supportive environment that embraces technical and aesthetic exploration, innovation and collaboration.
Included in 'MATRIX' are works by Deborah Bell, Stephen Hobbs, William Kentridge, Maja Maljevic, Senzo Shabangu, Diane Victor and Mary Wafer that offer viewers insight into techniques from linocut to aquatint. As well as plates and proofs, the installation includes explanatory text for each technique used.
25 January 2014 - 09 March 2014
'The Needle and the Damage Done'
Diane Victor at David Krut ProjectsDavid Krut Projects is pleased to present an exhibition of prints by extraordinary printmaker, Diane Victor – the first solo show of her work in Cape Town since 2008. The exhibition comprises works created between 2008 and 2013, as well as a very early work from 1986. The keen selection brings viewers up to date with the artist’s production, as well as reiterating her mastery of the medium that has long served her unrelenting critical interrogation of everyday atrocities and the abuse of power.
For Victor, making art ‘provides a way of working through troublesome images that lodge themselves persistently in her memory.’ The process is cathartic. The visual equivalent of psychoanalytic ‘talking cure’, Victor draws her subject matter from far and wide, pulling information from the media and personal encounters, transforming them into rich and heavily populated compositions, full-blown narratives employing her grotesque and characteristic iconography. In this exhibition, one sees Victor still pre-occupied with ‘the big “catholic” sins – greed, lust, envy and excess'( Bonwyn Law-Viljoen). Victor responds to instances of these in politics, tackling corruption, fraud and extortion on a grand scale within dominant social institutions. Simultaneously, she exposes the perpetuation of these crimes in everyday lives. As much as her technique is relevant to her subject matter, the pressure of the press and the bleeding of the ink into paper are also metaphorical of the persistence of injustice and Victor’s need to process and express her responses through visual language.
Whether her politics and platforms are public or personal, her imagery is the stuff of nightmares. However, the seriousness of her subject matter is kept in check by her sense of humour, revealed through parody, sharp satire and ironic self-effacement – a belief that ‘if you take yourself too seriously as an artist you are in very big trouble' (Luke Crossley, Juliet White & Krystina Comer).
12 April 2014 - 29 June 2014
