the sourcerer: Zwelethu Mthethwa: New Works

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Zwelethu Mthethwa: New Works

We saw this exhibition on Thursday and it's been on my mind ever since.

Selections from the series The Brave Ones:

Large portraits of young men from the Shembe Church group during their annual pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of Nhlangakazi in Kwa-Zulu Natal.

I love large photographs and I found the subject matter interesting, but the images didn't speak to me - I wouldn't want to live with any of them. In this genre I'm an admirer of Pieter Hugo's work - somehow he manages to capture his subjects with such consummate empathy.

Because of Zwelethu Mthethwa's background as a painter, his photographic work is often described as 'painterly'. Regarding this series, reference is made to the rich colour and texture - this was another thing I didn't particularly like about it. Too much yellow in the mix makes for a saturated image lacking depth and richness.

But... the other series - The End of an Era, these I loved. They are still life interiors of hostels for migrant male labourers in Johannesburg. They could just as well be contemporary paintings by old masters.

Traditional chiaroscuro, points of vivid light in sumptuous brown darkness. The everyday becomes filled with portent. You wonder about the occupant and you wonder what's behind you in the room.

I wanted to see them without the glass.

iArt Gallery, 71 Loop Street, until 29 June

1 comment:

tanjawilmot said...: this is a review I can read, the images I can picture in my mind, and nary an artjargonjumble term litters the text. reviews, keep em coming miss tart.; June 7, 2011 at 10:42 AM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.