A group exhibition examining the state of your being in these extraordinary times.
Angst or chill, politics or environment or an optimistic view of the Zeitgeist.
Time to celebrate
The Association of Arts Pretoria was established on 27 September 1947.
It is 75 years later and we are still going strong!
An exhibition of works by artists between the ages of 40 & 60
In a time of crisis, people look for solutions to transcend their current state of being. They try to find alternatives to and transcendence from what they are experiencing at that particular point in time. To some extent, covid has brought this condition on and induced a search for vision, for a path forward and for ways and means to reimagine the world.
The roles of the shaman and the artist have always been tied to vision and a position of existing between the physical and the non-physical worlds. The artist makes the invisible visible, and the shaman aims to transcend the visible and enter into another realm.
Shamanism has roots outside of the West, in the cultures of indigenous peoples across the world, extending through Siberia, Australia and Africa, as well as the Americas and pre-modern Europe. But shamanism itself is not a formalised system of beliefs and can be applied as a concept or a state of consciousness.
In the modern world, the artist has taken over much of the role of the shaman. For our purposes during this workshop, the artist as shaman in three roles will be considered: as endowed with special sight, insight and power; as transformer; and as healer.
The most successful of the artworks completed during the workshop will be exhibited as a fringe exhibition to the Shaman exhibition at the Gallery at Glen Carlou. Each participant will have at least one work on show.
Agbogbloshie in Ghana is a major hub for e-waste dumping on the outskirts of central Accra. The site conjures up images of an urban wasteland of thick black smoke pierced by flame over miles of dilapidated desktops. Bare wires and broken glass leave the viewer with a sense of despair. Amidst fields of debris, there are people in soot-stained clothes sorting through the wreckage. The recycling in Agbogbloshie is primarily informal, consisting of individuals manually removing parts of burning plastics to expose profitable metals, such as copper and wires. The great paradox here is that individuals rely on the recycling for their livelihood, yet this method of informal recycling and metal recovery presents numerous human health and ecological concerns for them, and the surrounding informal settlement. The soil and water in the surrounding area indicate the presence of toxic contaminants such as arsenic, lead and mercury. With over 50 million tonnes of e- waste produced every year, it is important to recognise that e- waste management is an inherently global issue and one that is not being equitably addressed.
The work developed for this exhibition is a whole ‘palimpsest’ of human effort and history. In ancient Greece, a ‘palimpsest’ was a parchment written upon twice, provoking the idea of vanishing words, memories, and stories, and implying a process of layering and retrieving. AD-Reflex’s entire sensibility appears to be stretched between irreconcilable extremes. In their hands, history and fact, beauty and despair, turn out to be disturbingly malleable and imprecise. They draw on any source that might provide the mythical structure to underpin their imagery. Diverse sources ranging from the recycling efforts in Agbogbloshie, Greek mythology, Caravaggio, Francis Bacon and Twenty First Century technologies co-exist freely, and are in perpetual transformation. The ‘palimpsest’ speaks to a cohabitation of seemingly alien narratives folding and unfolding in dialogue. This discloses a state of duality, where we feel aware and unaware, empowered and disempowered.
Through extensive layering, their work borders on the ‘alchemical’ where no clear distinction can be drawn between the painterly and the digital. Painting clashes with technology in the form of 3D- modelling, digital collage, and digital photo manipulation techniques on print and Diasec, to form a distinctly new visual language that is resolutely grounded in the ‘here’ and ‘now’.
“Of all the forms of wisdom, ‘hindsight’ is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving. With the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', and is apt to start seeing them everywhere.”
AD-Reflex
Artist duo, AD-Reflex, was formed in 2015 and consists of contemporary South African artists Johan Conradie and Karl Gustav Sevenster.
ablinum Cultural Management (group) concludes the art exhibition ArtAttitude 2019 with participation in the PULSE Art Fair, from Thursday 5 to Sunday 8 December, at the Indian Beach Park of #MiamiBeach.
On the occasion of the 15th anniversary, PULSE Art Fair dedicates this edition to the largest exhibition of international contemporary art. In the overwhelming environment that is the Miami Art Week, one experiences the energy of stimulating art and balancing it with the right dose of art market.
For workers in the PULSE sector it is no longer just an art fair, it has now become the essential appointment to exchange opinions and discover new trends.
Deepest Darkest Contemporary Gallery opens it’s winter Group Show, ‘Constellation’ on Saturday
29 June. The show features an exciting line-up of 12 established and emerging South African
artists presenting painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration, photography and mixed media works.
Gallerist Deon Redman notes: ‘Constellation’ further establishes the gallery’s focus on curating
quality, accessible work across multiple art practices. Premised on the Oscar Wilde quote, ‘We are
all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’, the show explores ideals of myth and
legend, the vulnerability of the constant human quest for meaning, and the acquiring of abstracts as
a means of defining context and formulating understanding, both personal and communal.
The solo project, “Alchemical Beasts”, by South African collaborative duo, AD-Reflex, explore intersections of ‘alchemy’ in contemporary art and science. Alchemy, the royal art of transforming stones into silver and base metals into gold, has captured the popular imagination for centuries and is a particularly fruitful subject for artists. AD-Reflex depicts the artist studio as ‘alchemical laboratory’, wherein digital culture and new technologies collide in unexpected ways with oil painting and various other paint mediums. Resulting from this, the artists also shed light on our changing understanding of the world and our position in it.
Art is a non-verbal language understood by people speaking different mother tongues. It conveys both historical and social facts, lifestyle, inspiration, and feelings. We’ve been creating a dialogue among artists from various cities and countries.
The show takes place at Gallery MC, New York City, September 27 - October 12, 2018. The Opening Event: September 28, 2018. The Networking Event for exhibitors and friends: September 29, 2018. All finalists will be contacted individually regarding the upcoming exhibition. Art of all submitted artists will be demonstrated digitally as a projection on a gallery wall throughout the exhibition time.
The group exhibition, Wounds and relics, focuses on art which has been made at either personal or social points of friction, fragmentation or pain and which cuts through the smooth, but also comforting surface of conventional culture. In equal measure poetic and political, the artists that form part of the show explore the paradox of simultaneously forgetting and remembering the social scars of violent conflicts, and how we carry these with us, whether as traces or wounds, or objects surviving from an earlier time.
The London Contemporary Art Prize aims to reveal and promote artists who have yet to establish a profile on the contemporary London art scene. The Prize is aimed at artists working in one or more of the following media: drawing, printing, painting, photography, digital art, sculpture and video.
F THE ART WORLD IS AN INTERNATIONAL ART COMPETITION WHERE FINE ARTISTS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, DIGITAL ARTISTS, AND SCULPTORS COMPETE FOR A CHANCE TO BE EXHIBITED IN NEW YORK CITY FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK!
Like the god Pan, painting has frequently been proclaimed dead. First the photograph killed it and then Duchamp with the readymade. His criticism of retinal art removed technical virtuosity as painting's primary virtue. However, in the panic of its own demise the medium found a way out of potential redundancy to redefine itself as infinitely flexible.
The assimilatory capacity of painting is where its true virtue lies; consuming whatever seems to pose a threat to its relevance. It seems that this very crisis is what allows the artists who employ this sensual, gestural medium to continually reformulate its scope and character. Through its fluidity, the material responds to the pressures placed on it.
The exhibition, Dead and dreaming (still life) aims to draw together asmall selection of artists who have significantly contributed, in on way or another, to the vitality of painting in a contemporary South African context.
Gallery 2 is pleased to present the group exhibition “Comfortably numb” from 3-26 August, 2017. Conceived by artist and curator Johan Conradie, the exhibition takes as a starting point the evocative lyrics of Pink Floyd's 1979 song, "Comfortably numb". The exhibition brings together the works by contemporary South African artists which combine visual tension and a strong conceptual vigour, whilst reverberating closely with the ideas and sentiments as expressed through this iconic song. Envisioned as a dialogue between the works of artists from different backgrounds, the exhibition explores notions of 'alienation', 'disillusionment', 'delirium', ‘disembodiment’, 'emotional detachment', 'in-between states', ‘invisibility’ and 'melancholy'.
The album “The Wall” is a concept album about Pink, an embittered and alienated rock star. The song “Comfortably numb” compares Pink’s memories of being feverishly ill as a child with his later experience of feeling nothing at all in adulthood. The lyrics feature interplay between a doctor treating the adult Pink and Pink’s inner dialogue. Roger Waters claimed that the song is about "detachment from reality" and "alienation", while Dave Gilmour suggested that "the song could be divided into two sections: dark and light".
Artistic practice emerges ‘in-between’, beyond geographic demarcations, and arbitrary boundaries. The exhibition emphasizes that this state of ‘in-between’ contains a wide range of assertive and rewarding potentialities. These artists engage the viewer in the often intimate movement and destruction of human life and, at the same time, the persistence of the delicate, humorous, lyrical, or divine. The sequences of narrative information and visual effect evoke the fragile endurance of the sacred and the spiritual.
We are organising a very large art project which is moving around the world and is stopping at the best art locations in the world. As it stands, Art Basel is the most important art trade fair in the international art market. Every year, during these days in June, artists, art collectors, gallery owners and many VIPs meet up in Basel. A large proportion of the roughly 90,000 visitors travel via the Euroairport. The Euroairport welcomes around 7.1 million visitors per year! THE ARTBOX.PROJECT Basel 1.0 will take place on Euroairport’s events platform, next to the giant “Luminator” sculpture by Jean Tinguely. Jean Tinguely is an internationally recognised sculptor and the number one representative of kinetic art. The exhibition takes place on a surface measuring 300m² and is open daily during Art Basel Art Week from 4am-midnight from 14 June - 18 June 2017. All registered pieces of artwork are displayed on an oversized screen. Each piece of artwork (labelled with the name of the artist and the name of the artwork) will be on the screen for a substantial amount of time, and will be visible multiple times. A judging panel chooses 25 semi-finalists and 5 finalists from all of the registered pieces of artwork; all 30 artists may display their registered original piece of artwork. There will be a public vote during the exhibition. The winner will receive a collaborative contract with THE ARTBOX.GALLERY Switzerland. The closing date for registration is 30 April 2017.
The GAA Ltd also known as the Global Art Agency presents the second edition of the "Tokyo International Art Fair" 26-27 May 2017, HIKARIE HALL SHIBUYA.
The art fair features paintings, sculptures, photography art, illustration and multi media artworks by award-winning and top emerging artists.
Giving Art Collectors and Art Enthusiast a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy art directly from the artist that has travelled all the way to Tokyo. A unique experience for both visitors and exhibitor, at the fabulous Hilarie Shibuya.
“DESIRE” features the works of contemporary South African artists, known for challenging the ambiguity and paradox of ‘desire’ head-on. We were born from desire; it is desire that moves us, and, in moving us, gives our life direction and meaning. One provocative aspect of these artists is not their imagery, as such, but the manner by which many of them take intimate experiences and translate them into public expression.
PRIEST presents Critical Discharge.
Critical Discharge - Created by Wayne Matthews and Alison Shaw
1. a physical discourse (dis- away; Currere- to run) constituting an extended form of linguistic criticism that views image, action and object as critical (criticus/ diseased or ill); a discursive formula and phenomena. (?.) critical response to crisis or threat in the socio-political dynamic that often seeks to adequately and even inadequately produce insight into the way language, in its extended forms, both generates and resists power, abuse and dominion.
To unload but not as a release from “obligation.”
2. a phrase or trope that allows for maximum projection; more explicitly, a difference that can extend the metaphor.
