PANGAEA: NEW ART FROM AFRICA & LATIN AMERICA AT
SAATCHI GALLERY
April 2, 2014 - November 2, 2014
PANGAEA: NEW ART FROM AFRICA & LATIN AMERICA AT
SAATCHI GALLERY
April 2, 2014 - November 2, 2014
April 2, 2014 - November 2, 2014
Writing By Emilie Shane
The exhibition starts with Columbian artist Rafael Gómezbarros’
giant ants climbing all around the walls. On closer inspection the bodies of
the insects are casts of human skulls, representing asylum seekers the world
over, but also paying tribute to thousands of Columbians who have died as a
result of armed conflict in the country.
Antonio Malta Campos’ large, semi-abstract works take up the better
part of three walls in one of the larger galleries. Each painting is comprised
of two adjoined canvases that show Cubist-style heads; the two canvases can be
thought of as separate, but the background shapes across both allow them to
become one. Sharing the same gallery space as these portraits is a sculptural
piece made of glass panels by Jose Carlos Martinat. Although these two artists
make for a harmonious pairing because of their similarly colourful aesthetics,
the contexts in which they create their works are very different: Campos’ work
comes to fruition within the confines of his studio, while Martinat’s graffiti
window panes are readymade objects from around Mexico City.
A sequence of bizarre pairings continues throughout the exhibition.
For example, Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou’s photographic series – in beautiful
homage to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon – shares gallery space
with Boris Nzebo’s paintings of hairstyles merging with the architecture of the
city Douala. The only significant common feature of the two artists’ work
appears to be their triptych arrangement.
Though the Saatchi Gallery has made an effort to project the
exhibition as part of a global shift towards the exploration of cultures
outside of Europe and the US, stylistically we are faced with the huge
influence from European and North American art movements. The work of Brazilian
artist Christian Rosa, for example, is inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s colour
philosophy, and borrows the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing. What is
interesting, however, is how the featured artists combine these influences with
those from their own cultures. Vincent Michea transforms album covers and photo
scenes from the golden days of Dakar into postcard-ideal paintings, tinged with
nostalgia in the style of Roy Lichtenstein.
While the works are tenuously unified by some common themes,
including immigration, globalisation and nostalgia for cities’ pasts, their
overall diversity poses challenges. Few of the works are solely defined by
their location, making difficult any parallels between the art of Latin America
and that of Africa. After leaving the exhibition you are not left with a clear
sense of either Latin American or African cultural identity. But in introducing
us well to the work of new artists, Pangaea succeeds.
Emilie Shane is a contributor to RA Magazine.
You may visit Saatchi Gallery’s web page to get more information about
artists and arts photographs on exhibition Pangaea:
New Art From Africa & Latin America
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/pangaea/
RAFAEL GOMEZBARROS
Casa Tomada 2013
Resin, Fiber Glass, Madera, Screen Cotton, Cuerda Arenas, Cerrejón Coal
Body:50 x 20 x 50; Legs 90 x 50 cm
Resin, Fiber Glass, Madera, Screen Cotton, Cuerda Arenas, Cerrejón Coal
Body:50 x 20 x 50; Legs 90 x 50 cm
RAFAEL GOMEZBARROS
Installations of
hundreds of sculptures representing fifty centimetre long ants take over public
buildings. Their bodies are made up by the assembling of two human skull casts
as if the Santa Marta-born artist were attempting to summon death in life.
Rafael Gómezbarros’
work makes visible the overlooked. His intention is to address the plight of
millions of displaced people who constitute the invisible but pervasive mass of
immigrants crossing the planet. Buried in the narrative of diaspora lays a
tribute to thousands of Colombians who suffered internal displacement and
violent deaths as casualties of the armed conflict that wreaked havoc in the
country for the most part of the last fifty years.
Ants being usually associated with hard labour and a complex social organization are turned into phantasms of the disappeared, ghost like figures that have acquired the capacity to take over national monuments. Gómezbarros previously deployed his legion of ants onto historical buildings such as Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino – the haçienda where Simón Bolívar spent his final days – as well as Barranquilla’s customs building.
In Bogotá, he invaded a commercial gallery with one thousand polyester cast creatures and covered the National Congress’s stone façade, his most meaningful attempt to address the national security policies that endorsed a violent status quo for decades.
Entitled Casa Tomada, the work makes a very particular reference to a short story by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, in which the inhabitants of a large mansion become invaded by elusive presences announced solely by muted sounds. In the context of these public art interventions, the metaphor reminds the viewer what Cortázar himself declared shortly before passing away: unless a country buries its dead, they will always be remembered as ghosts in the attic.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Ants being usually associated with hard labour and a complex social organization are turned into phantasms of the disappeared, ghost like figures that have acquired the capacity to take over national monuments. Gómezbarros previously deployed his legion of ants onto historical buildings such as Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino – the haçienda where Simón Bolívar spent his final days – as well as Barranquilla’s customs building.
In Bogotá, he invaded a commercial gallery with one thousand polyester cast creatures and covered the National Congress’s stone façade, his most meaningful attempt to address the national security policies that endorsed a violent status quo for decades.
Entitled Casa Tomada, the work makes a very particular reference to a short story by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, in which the inhabitants of a large mansion become invaded by elusive presences announced solely by muted sounds. In the context of these public art interventions, the metaphor reminds the viewer what Cortázar himself declared shortly before passing away: unless a country buries its dead, they will always be remembered as ghosts in the attic.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/rafael_gomezbarros.htm?section_name=pangaea
ANTONIO MALTA CAMPOS
Figures in Red #2 - 2004
Oil on Canvas - 230 x 360 cm
Oil on Canvas - 230 x 360 cm
ANTONIO MALTA CAMPOS
Once upon a time,
jazz introduced the unstable wonder of improvisation, or jamming, to the
structures that formerly guided music making. According to the dictionary, the
expression has various meanings aside signaling the participation in a jam
session, such as: To drive or wedge forcibly into a tight position.
Brazilian artist
Antonio Malta Campos seems to apply jamming principles to the elaboration of
his unpredictable but close-fitting paintings. In a video made of sequences
that show a visual account of his creative process, we see him beginning a
painting with a single pattern that grows over time into a complex interweaving
of visual strata.
We witness how the colour layers start defining organic forms, how transparencies suggest spectral shapes and cubist formations of light and shadow shine out.
We witness how the colour layers start defining organic forms, how transparencies suggest spectral shapes and cubist formations of light and shadow shine out.
The appreciation of
the overall composition subsequently gives way to the perception of existing
narratives: the soundless intensity of a couple’s conversation and solitary
characters in a minimal landscape, looking straight into the void or staring at
us as lost heroes. Occasional grids of single elements, such as skulls serially
repeated on the painting, also produce a jamming effect of abstract and
figurative elements.
In his stunning
gouaches from the series called Misturinhas,
painted motifs are mixed with collaged photographs. Echoes of avant-garde
experiments in photo-montage – such as in the memorable works of Raoul Hausmann
and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy are brought to mind. Malta Campos,
employment of sampling, jamming and layering seem to indicate that if his works
had sound, theirs would be the sound of jazz.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Text © Gabriela Salgado
ANTONIO MALTA CAMPOS
Untitled - 2007
Acrylic on canvas - 230 x 360 cm
Acrylic on canvas - 230 x 360 cm
ANTONIO MALTA CAMPOS
Figures in Red - 2004
Oil on canvas - 230 x 360 cm
Oil on canvas - 230 x 360 cm
JOSE CARLOS MARTINAT
Ejercicio Superficial #12 - 2011
Glass and spray paint
Glass and spray paint
Dimensions variable
JOSE CARLOS MARTINAT
Jose Carlos
Martinat’s art is at the interface of real and virtual worlds; his sources of
inspiration are architecture and the urban milieu, human and cyberspace
memories. His multimedia installations and sculptural assemblages incorporate a
diversity of materials
and strategies to alter preconceptions in regards to where things belong, he
brings imprints meant for the street to the gallery, as an archeologist of
sorts. This offhand methodology manifests in a number of manners.
Banner-like objects are made from transfers of political parties’ logos found in the city walls by means of lifting off the texture of the paint in resin. These Pintas are unmediated appropriations of political slogans fragments that end up pasted onto gallery walls.
The fascination with architectural modernism is matched in Martinat’s case by a penchant for a certain kitsch aesthetic that he articulates with the inclusion of tagging, strident colour and street art strategies. His Ejercicios Superficiales series encompasses a number of bodies of work in different mediums that generally evoke the idea of superficiality in the use of readymade surfaces covered in graffiti.
The superficiality of his intention – or rather his love of the surface – is also present in the sculptural composition Monumentos Vandalizables – Abstracción del Poder presented in the Mercosul Biennale of 2009, where fragments of emblematic buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the futuristic Brasilia are built in white coated wood, and subsequently offered to the exhibition visitors to spray paint over them with slogans, graffiti and other intervention techniques. The dirtying of the icon could appear like a rebel boutade that conversely serves to perpetuate the iconography of modernism. It could also be a liberating force in the face of the widespread abuse of power.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Banner-like objects are made from transfers of political parties’ logos found in the city walls by means of lifting off the texture of the paint in resin. These Pintas are unmediated appropriations of political slogans fragments that end up pasted onto gallery walls.
The fascination with architectural modernism is matched in Martinat’s case by a penchant for a certain kitsch aesthetic that he articulates with the inclusion of tagging, strident colour and street art strategies. His Ejercicios Superficiales series encompasses a number of bodies of work in different mediums that generally evoke the idea of superficiality in the use of readymade surfaces covered in graffiti.
The superficiality of his intention – or rather his love of the surface – is also present in the sculptural composition Monumentos Vandalizables – Abstracción del Poder presented in the Mercosul Biennale of 2009, where fragments of emblematic buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the futuristic Brasilia are built in white coated wood, and subsequently offered to the exhibition visitors to spray paint over them with slogans, graffiti and other intervention techniques. The dirtying of the icon could appear like a rebel boutade that conversely serves to perpetuate the iconography of modernism. It could also be a liberating force in the face of the widespread abuse of power.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
MARIO MACILAU
My Toy (The Zionist series) - 2010
Print on cotton rag paper - 120 x 80 cm
Print on cotton rag paper - 120 x 80 cm
MARIO MACILAU
Peace (The Zionist series) - 2010
Print on cotton rag paper - 120 x 80 cm
Print on cotton rag paper - 120 x 80 cm
MARIO MACILAU
Mário Macilau’s
ambitious path towards becoming a social documentary photographer began with a
symbolically charged instance. At the age of fourteen, while walking down
Vladimir Lenin Avenue in Maputo he shot his first image with a borrowed camera,
capturing a woman selling cassava in a street market. From that site, marked by
the name of a political leader whose revolution was imported to Africa, his
personal utopia took him to travel the world as a professional photographer.
The artist’s photographs, which unveil the human condition under the oppression
of injustice and the hardship of poverty, have been exhibited internationally.
Macilau embarks in
long standing thematic essays, constructing a narrative that, by means of a
certain epic realism, produces ambivalent images of arresting power, as they
are simultaneously crude and beautiful, mesmerizing and heartbreaking.
His subject matter is found in African living conditions, social imbalance, environmental disaster and waste, all issues that overwhelm daily life in his city of birth, Maputo, where he continues to live.
His subject matter is found in African living conditions, social imbalance, environmental disaster and waste, all issues that overwhelm daily life in his city of birth, Maputo, where he continues to live.
Sharing concern with
many of his contemporaries, the artist’s labour series comprising of images of
hard working conditions in cement plants or dump sites of Nairobi and Maputo,
proposes a fresh approach to the burning issue of alternative economies, which
is at the center of contemporary socio-economic debates.
As in the film City of God, where a young
photographer strives to record the beauty and terror of his environment and
attempts to make a career to soothe the dystopia of underdevelopment, Mário
Macilau is a vivid example of resilience and vision amid turbulent waters.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Text © Gabriela Salgado
MARIO MACILAU
Children of Jesus (The Zionist series) - 2010
Print on cotton rag paper - 120 x 80 cm
Print on cotton rag paper - 120 x 80 cm
OSCAR MURILLO
Dark Americano 2012
Oil and dirt on canvas
Oil and dirt on canvas
304.8 x 429.3 cm
OSCAR MURILLO
This is an art of mutation. Materials migrate from one medium to
another: a collection of biro drawings gets pulped to become the flooring of a
complex installation where disparate objects convene as in an alchemist’s
laboratory.
Recycled materials
and mediums are gestures of adjustment that Oscar Murillo seems to have
acquired from his border experience: born in Colombia and emigrating to London
as a child, he had to adopt language, customs and cultural codes, being
inescapably transformed by the unending process of migration.
If our mother tongue
and the food that nourished us as children make us whom we are regardless of
how far we travel, we can trace the reason behind the prevailing presence of
foodstuffs – and written language – in Murillo’s oeuvre as a form of
resilience. However, he does not treat the ornate coconut water packaging, the
rice sacks and the snack wrappings as ready made in traditional conceptualist
practice: he collages them up in an attempt to complicate art’s materiality and
cultural coding. Furthermore, the packages are all written in Spanish, vestiges
of the numerous imported goods that populate London’s South American markets.
They also seem to
bastardise the Pop Art legacy in his work through material transgressions
against the adequateness of the canvas support, which is in turn exposed
to the dust and dirt collected from every day life in the studio.
In a similar spirit,
his private views become traditional Colombian food gatherings that do away
with the sterility of white cube cocktail rituals.
Is this contemporary disregard for the hierarchies of materials and the class-ridden art world a 21st century Povera manifesto in the times of economic uncertainty? Mixing and breaking the hierarchies of race, class, North–South, high and low, oil paint and dirt, Oscar Murillo unwraps a consciously composed wildness based on the stuff that life and art are truly made of.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Is this contemporary disregard for the hierarchies of materials and the class-ridden art world a 21st century Povera manifesto in the times of economic uncertainty? Mixing and breaking the hierarchies of race, class, North–South, high and low, oil paint and dirt, Oscar Murillo unwraps a consciously composed wildness based on the stuff that life and art are truly made of.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
OSCAR MURILLO
Untitled 2011
Oil, oil stick, graphite, dirt on canvas
Oil, oil stick, graphite, dirt on canvas
170 x 190 cm
OSCAR MURILLO
Untitled 2011
Oil, oil stick, graphite, dirt on canvas
Oil, oil stick, graphite, dirt on canvas
170 x 220 cm
OSCAR MURILLO
Untitled 2011
Oil, oil stick, graphite, dirt on canvas
Oil, oil stick, graphite, dirt on canvas
170 x 210 cm
OSCAR MURILLO
Untitled 2011
Graphite, dirt on canvas, wood, steel
Graphite, dirt on canvas, wood, steel
442 x 499 cm
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SAATCHI GALLERY
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CHRISTIAN ROSA
Dead on Arrival 2013
Pencil, spray paint, oil stick and oil on canvas
180 x 240 cm
Pencil, spray paint, oil stick and oil on canvas
180 x 240 cm
CHRISTIAN ROSA
The founder of
abstraction Wassily Kandinsky advocated for a non-objective art that would not
merely represent the world but turn inside the mind to express subjective experiences.
Having learnt music before painting, the Russian painter and theorist aspired
to transfer the unmediated power of sound to the creation of an emotional
visuality. His expression ‘Each colour lives by its mysterious life’
constitutes one of the core strategies of his personal path in painting.
Furthermore, his was a fundamental contribution to the perception of the art
experience, closer to the spiritual than to intellectual engagement.
Such is the
experience proposed by Christian Rosa. Employing pencil, spray and oil paint,
the physical actions that the artist executes in front of his large canvases
create an abstract pictorial universe that allows colour and form to live by
their own mystery. Furthermore, as if to enhance the sense of submission of the
will in the process of painting, he incorporates mistakes as potential points
of departure of further visual configurations. The evolution of his lyrical
abstract images is thus determined by chance and an instinctive trust of the
energy contained in physical motion and failure. The result is an ensemble of
subtle planes and lines sketched in primary colours surrounded by gestural
pencil drawn paths that suggest natural forms such as faces, raindrops or body
parts. The interaction of these elements with the white background renders a
meditative space where calligraphic scrawling is punctuated by tiny furtive
fires emitting their incandescence.
Avoiding the
preconceived compositional drive that generally rules the painting act, the
artist lets his body become the primary vehicle for an automatic writing of
sorts, where the images are generated as in a chance-based exquisite corpse.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Text © Gabriela Salgado
CHRISTIAN ROSA
Endless refill 2013
Spray paint, pencil, tape, oil stick and oil on canvas
Spray paint, pencil, tape, oil stick and oil on canvas
180 x 200 cm
FREDY ALZATE
Lugares en Fuga
(Fleeing Places) is an unsettling
object.
At first glance it appears as a section of a wall that has folded upon itself following an unexpected transformation; a metamorphosis utterly inappropriate for the materials that symbolize endurance and security: brick and mortar.
As with some other similarly minded contemporary artists, Fredy Alzate is deeply influenced by architecture and its multiple vernacular surrogates.
His work focuses on the observation of the constructive principles that guide precarious urbanization in his city of birth, Medellin, and by extension in the Latin American urbis at large.
In his sculptures and installation pieces, the artist explores the inherent contradictions of uncontainable urban (under) development and the permanent mutations produced by the urgency of adapting buildings to the landscape in the city’s poor peripheries. Through careful observation of social space, his work is both political and poetic, as it draws its constructive psychology from literary references: Lugares en Fuga refers to Italo Calvino’s novel ‘Invisible Cities’.
Built within the formal lexicon of architecture, his simulacrum dissects the marginalization of large sectors of the population across the continent. The apparent chaos perched up in the hills of the urban peripheries of Latin America challenge deceptive narratives of progress, bringing to mind that we live in a fragile culture of congestion.
This fragility appears blatantly expressed in Alzate’s installation Aluvión (Landslide). The composition, made of resin-cast sculptures mixed with heaps of recycled demolition materials, re-enacts the precariousness of vernacular architecture when submitted to the brutal forces of nature, aggravated by deforestation and over construction.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
At first glance it appears as a section of a wall that has folded upon itself following an unexpected transformation; a metamorphosis utterly inappropriate for the materials that symbolize endurance and security: brick and mortar.
As with some other similarly minded contemporary artists, Fredy Alzate is deeply influenced by architecture and its multiple vernacular surrogates.
His work focuses on the observation of the constructive principles that guide precarious urbanization in his city of birth, Medellin, and by extension in the Latin American urbis at large.
In his sculptures and installation pieces, the artist explores the inherent contradictions of uncontainable urban (under) development and the permanent mutations produced by the urgency of adapting buildings to the landscape in the city’s poor peripheries. Through careful observation of social space, his work is both political and poetic, as it draws its constructive psychology from literary references: Lugares en Fuga refers to Italo Calvino’s novel ‘Invisible Cities’.
Built within the formal lexicon of architecture, his simulacrum dissects the marginalization of large sectors of the population across the continent. The apparent chaos perched up in the hills of the urban peripheries of Latin America challenge deceptive narratives of progress, bringing to mind that we live in a fragile culture of congestion.
This fragility appears blatantly expressed in Alzate’s installation Aluvión (Landslide). The composition, made of resin-cast sculptures mixed with heaps of recycled demolition materials, re-enacts the precariousness of vernacular architecture when submitted to the brutal forces of nature, aggravated by deforestation and over construction.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/fredy_alzate.htm?section_name=pangaea
ABOUDIA
Untitled (Diptych) 2011
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
176 x 237cm (each canvas)
ABOUDIA
Aboudia’s vast paintings convey a strident visual universe made of
disparate fragments.
In 2011 the young artist from the Ivory Coast was forced to take refuge in an underground studio due to the sudden escalation of violence that followed electoral chaos in the city of Abidjan. The images born out of this experience are recorded in the work entitled Daloa 29, where a multitude of characters display menacing weapons.
In Le Couloir de la Mort, a gloomy scene is set with a sinister army of crude child faced figures, contrasting sharply with the impermanence of shadowy, oversized skulls which seem to hover over a background as dark and chilling as a cave.
In 2011 the young artist from the Ivory Coast was forced to take refuge in an underground studio due to the sudden escalation of violence that followed electoral chaos in the city of Abidjan. The images born out of this experience are recorded in the work entitled Daloa 29, where a multitude of characters display menacing weapons.
In Le Couloir de la Mort, a gloomy scene is set with a sinister army of crude child faced figures, contrasting sharply with the impermanence of shadowy, oversized skulls which seem to hover over a background as dark and chilling as a cave.
From the more recent high pitch paintings composed of contrasted
faces, erotic undertones and collaged newspaper cuttings emerges a new
palimpsest that evokes urban life in the West African city.
Cars and skyscrapers, working TV sets, pasted photographs of traditional African sculptures and written sentences reminiscent of street art deliver a visual symphony whose beat is the rhythm of contemporary urban life. The rich synthesis of various painting traditions such as North American Pop and Abstract Expressionism sit comfortably next to graffiti on mural size canvases that fervently demand the viewer’s attention.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Cars and skyscrapers, working TV sets, pasted photographs of traditional African sculptures and written sentences reminiscent of street art deliver a visual symphony whose beat is the rhythm of contemporary urban life. The rich synthesis of various painting traditions such as North American Pop and Abstract Expressionism sit comfortably next to graffiti on mural size canvases that fervently demand the viewer’s attention.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/aboudia.htm?section_name=pangaea
ABOUDIA
Untitled (Black Painting) 2011
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
180 x 400 cm
ABOUDIA
Daloa 29 - 2011
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
180 x 400 cm
ALEJANDRA PRIETO
Coal Mirror
BORIS NZEBO
HLM (Habitats à Loyer Modérés) - 2013
Acrylic on canvas - Triptych, each: 230 x 200 cm
Acrylic on canvas - Triptych, each: 230 x 200 cm
BORIS NZEBO
Boris Nzebo’s
multilayered paintings and collages conjure the astounding visual complexity
typical of the West African city.
Entirely drawing his subject matter from urban culture in his hometown Douala, Nzebo invests his works with psycho geographical impulse: their primary subjects are the elaborate hairstyles of men and women, which he lays on city views as integral features of the architecture. Inspired by the hand-painted advertising illustrations found in West African beauty parlors, the heads incarnate the intimate relation between the individual and street life. This symbiotic connection allows for a multiplicity of readings of the image, rendering levels of information in a sort of visual polyphony that rhythmically integrates humans and the space they inhabit.
Entirely drawing his subject matter from urban culture in his hometown Douala, Nzebo invests his works with psycho geographical impulse: their primary subjects are the elaborate hairstyles of men and women, which he lays on city views as integral features of the architecture. Inspired by the hand-painted advertising illustrations found in West African beauty parlors, the heads incarnate the intimate relation between the individual and street life. This symbiotic connection allows for a multiplicity of readings of the image, rendering levels of information in a sort of visual polyphony that rhythmically integrates humans and the space they inhabit.
Possessing a
flamboyant, dandy-like sense of fashion and style, the artist weaves the
colourful silhouettes representing large human heads with the buildings’
façades or the intimacy of interiors, thus merging the diverse spheres where
social and psychological life take place.
Douala, the largest city of Cameroon, embodies a kaleidoscopic visual fabric where a vast repertoire of contemporary trends alternates with historical buildings, traditional and modern dress codes, graffiti and advertising. The organic nature of such layering, its unpredictability and resilience are at the very root of Boris Nzebo’s images, which mirror the city’s inhabitants’ horror vacui as they attempt to fill every available space with extraordinary intensity.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Douala, the largest city of Cameroon, embodies a kaleidoscopic visual fabric where a vast repertoire of contemporary trends alternates with historical buildings, traditional and modern dress codes, graffiti and advertising. The organic nature of such layering, its unpredictability and resilience are at the very root of Boris Nzebo’s images, which mirror the city’s inhabitants’ horror vacui as they attempt to fill every available space with extraordinary intensity.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
BORIS NZEBO
Untitled - 2013
Acrylic on canvas - 150 x 600 cm
BORIS NZEBO
Untitled - 2013
Acrylic on canvas - 150 x 600 cm
DILLON MARSH
Assimilation 1 - 2010
C-print - 184 x 232 cm
Assimilation 1 - 2010
C-print - 184 x 232 cm
DILLON MARSH
Sharp photographs of bizarre constructions in the Kalahari Desert
present us with a number of questions surrounding their identity. The uncanny
objects evoke grotesque ballerinas, animal heads, parasols or dismembered
bodies, turning the empty wilderness into a science fiction set. What are these
sculptural shapes growing off telephone poles? Where is their mysterious
creator whose massive and invisible hands produce these wonders, all strikingly
unique?
Under the generic title of Landmarks, Dillon Marsh presents elegant
photographs that address particular features of the landscape produced either
by natural forces or socio economic factors. In the series of birds nests
entitled Assimilation the focus is on the transformations of
the landscape due to animal intervention. In other series, wind or watercourses
are the architects of spectacular land alterations.
Conversely, in the body of work Diamonds Aren’t Forever Marsh
portrays abandoned farmhouses and decrepit mining towns of the Diamond Coast of
South Africa and Namibia, capturing human made changes. In these images the
impact on the life of communities is conveyed by focusing on abandoned
buildings and scrapped cars, excluding all human trace. Following on the
longstanding tradition of landscape photography the artist represents human
beings symbolically through natural space or architecture, hence delivering a
subtle narrative constructed from absence.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Text © Gabriela Salgado
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/dillon_marsh.htm?section_name=pangaea
DILLON MARSH
Assimilation 3 - 2013
C-print - 184 x 232cm
Assimilation 3 - 2013
C-print - 184 x 232cm
JOSE LERMA
José Lerma’s works illustrate the rise and fall of powerful
historical figures. Either taking inspiration from episodes of Puerto Rico’s
wars or focusing on portraying old celebrities such as the banker Samuel Benard
– considered the most famous and richest
banker in 18th century Europe – Lerma creates his paintings by building layers
of ball pen doodles. The heaps of cartoon-style drawings accumulate on the
canvas as if struggling for space to exist. They are later combined with an
array of household materials
– such as pink military parachutes – which are employed in the composition to
veil or frame the emerging oversized portraits. Such is the effect of the
combination of materials on a large scale that the portrayed subjects become monumental ghostly
silhouettes of Baroque effigies.
The mammoth scale of his paintings is matched by the crumpled paper
accumulations, that when erected within the gallery space, seem awkward
imitations of traditional marble busts. Both the kitsch aesthetic and the
references to popular culture heroes such as legendary boxer Emanuel Augustus
alongside the ‘homage’ to ruling historical figures, suggest a multi-temporal
approach to the eternal subjects of war, love and power that populate the
annals of art history.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Text © Gabriela Salgado
JOSE LERMA
Samuel Benard 2010
Acrylic on canvas, synthesizer, speakers
189 x 152 x 43 cm
JOSE LERMA
Madre Perla V-11 -
2011
Acrylic on canvas, keyboard, güiro - 244 x 458cm
Acrylic on canvas, keyboard, güiro - 244 x 458cm
IBRAHIM MAHAMA
Public art’s main virtue is to exist beyond the imposed hierarchies
of museum and galleries. Out in the open the works, orphans of preconceptions,
confront an unacquainted public, perhaps igniting a sense of wonder.
Ibrahim Mahama’s spectacular installations of sewn coal sacks are the result of his investigation of the conditions of supply and demand in African markets. The final product – the art – is equally displayed in market places thus defying the artifacts’ intrinsic value system.
Ibrahim Mahama’s spectacular installations of sewn coal sacks are the result of his investigation of the conditions of supply and demand in African markets. The final product – the art – is equally displayed in market places thus defying the artifacts’ intrinsic value system.
Mahama produces the large draping surfaces by carefully assembling
sacks imported by the Ghana Cocoa Board and repurposed by charcoal sellers. The
sacks present patches, markings and traces of traders’ names and locations on
their rough brown skin, which map out the many transits they endure as vessels
of commodities. The artist occasionally decorates them with the insertion of
mass-produced Chinese–African print patchwork adding yet another layer of
interpretation of the global movement of goods. The fact that fabric constitutes
a marker of identity as well as a sign of particular occasions in the African
context turns these insertions into a kind of portraiture of the wearers.
Wrapped around heaps of merchandise in the market place or embracing the contours of a museum building, the spreads of jute fibres become an oversized socio political inquiry of the origin of materials, referencing what is normally hidden for the sake of concept or form. Ibrahim Mahama denudes the transits and ownerships of jute sacks along their lives as porters of goods, rendering visible the mechanisms of trade which define the world’s economy.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Wrapped around heaps of merchandise in the market place or embracing the contours of a museum building, the spreads of jute fibres become an oversized socio political inquiry of the origin of materials, referencing what is normally hidden for the sake of concept or form. Ibrahim Mahama denudes the transits and ownerships of jute sacks along their lives as porters of goods, rendering visible the mechanisms of trade which define the world’s economy.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
IBRAHIM MAHAMA
Untitled - 2013
Draped jute sacks wall installation
Draped jute sacks wall installation
Dimensions variable
VINCENT MICHEA
Nº116 - 2008
Acrylic on canvas - 130 x 130 cm
Acrylic on canvas - 130 x 130 cm
VINCENT MICHEA
The bright-coloured paintings of Vincent Michea operate as
souvenirs of Dakar’s past glories, visual documents of the city’s undying
glamour. The capital of Senegal, Dakar, is seen behind the reticular lens of
Michea’s illustrations as on a TV set. Captured with postcard style graphic
sensibility, his images are built upon photographs of city views, ostensibly
focusing on the jewels of its modernist architecture and the overwhelming
elegance of the inhabitants of the pearl of West Africa.
The products of popular culture such as album covers, or the many
portraits of ordinary and famous dakarois are enhanced by a number of visual
strategies borrowed from Pop Art. Particularly influenced by Roy Lichtenstein
from whom he appropriates his hallmark Ben-Day dots, Michea re-enacts the
foundational strategies of copy and reproduction promoted by artists of the
1960s – including Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein himself.
His technique consists of the employment of strident blocks of colour to deliver a hard-edged imagery reminiscent of comic strips.
His technique consists of the employment of strident blocks of colour to deliver a hard-edged imagery reminiscent of comic strips.
Homages to Senegalese musical figures on large scale canvases where
he reproduces the album covers provide a hyper-realistic rendering of ephemeral
material culture that resonates with nostalgia. The same applies to the reworking
of the film stills taken from romantic French and Hollywood movies, where a
focus on the use of mass media is peppered with an acute sense of displacement
and melancholia.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Text © Gabriela Salgado
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/vincent_michea.htm?section_name=pangaea
VINCENT MICHEA
Nº117 - 2008
Acrylic on canvas - 130 x 130 cm
Acrylic on canvas - 130 x 130 cm
LEONCE RAPHAEL AGBODJELOU
During the last half of the 20th century, photographic portraiture
underwent impressive expansion in West Africa. The advent of independence that
swept the continent in the 1950s and 1960s provided a sense of pride expressed
in fashion, music and all aspects of social life that leaked into
photographers’ studios. In most coastal cities photographers played a
significant role in creating an archive of these developments, making the
movements immortal.
Benin’s Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou follows this unique tradition as
the successor of his father’s photographic practice. He has projected such
legacy into the future by founding the first photography school in Porto-Novo.
His Demoiselles de Porto Novo are among a number of bodies of work encompassed in Citizens of Porto Novo series, which focuses on social and cultural facets of the city such as religious ritual, sport, and even smuggling. In the Demoiselles, the elegance of the sitters is punctuated with historical references: the female models dressed in traditional fashion nonchalantly exhibit their nude torsos in the colonial setting of the artist’s family home. We suspect them watching us behind the wooden ceremonial masks that elicit Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon.
His Demoiselles de Porto Novo are among a number of bodies of work encompassed in Citizens of Porto Novo series, which focuses on social and cultural facets of the city such as religious ritual, sport, and even smuggling. In the Demoiselles, the elegance of the sitters is punctuated with historical references: the female models dressed in traditional fashion nonchalantly exhibit their nude torsos in the colonial setting of the artist’s family home. We suspect them watching us behind the wooden ceremonial masks that elicit Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon.
Agbodjélou’s house is one of a vast number of grand mansions built
at the end of the 19th century by Africans returning home after the abolition
of slavery in Brazil.
The building stands in as the artist’s melancholic set for the reversal of the gaze in the complex processes of colonization that marked the old slave port of Benin’s capital.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
The building stands in as the artist’s melancholic set for the reversal of the gaze in the complex processes of colonization that marked the old slave port of Benin’s capital.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
LEONCE RAPHAEL AGBODJELOU
Untitled triptych (Demoiselles de Porto-Novo series) 2012
C-print - 180 x 130 cm each
C-print - 180 x 130 cm each
LEONCE RAPHAEL AGBODJELOU
Untitled triptych (Demoiselles de Porto-Novo series) 2012
C-print - 180 x 130 cm each
C-print - 180 x 130 cm each
LEONCE RAPHAEL AGBODJELOU
Untitled triptych (Demoiselles de Porto-Novo series) 2012
C-print - 180 x 130 cm each
C-print - 180 x 130 cm each
DAVID KOLOANE
Once upon a time David Koloane enunciated: ‘Apartheid was a
politics of space more than anything…and much of the apartheid legislation was
denying people the right to move. It’s all about space; restricting
space…Claiming art is also reclaiming space.’
In the artist’s paintings this claim for space is achieved with exuberance and pain to deploy township scenes of electrifying intensity. His subject matter is found in the frantic buzz of every day commuting, mass protests, high speed traffic and some intimate corners that make up the inner city experience. The colour-saturated expressionism of his images gives life to multitudes of faceless people sporting placards, women working the streets and mongrels fighting for their invisible bounty. Like muted music, the images evoke the restless speed and confusion of a complex socio-political landscape, and the multiple urban anxieties in permanent mutation.
In the artist’s paintings this claim for space is achieved with exuberance and pain to deploy township scenes of electrifying intensity. His subject matter is found in the frantic buzz of every day commuting, mass protests, high speed traffic and some intimate corners that make up the inner city experience. The colour-saturated expressionism of his images gives life to multitudes of faceless people sporting placards, women working the streets and mongrels fighting for their invisible bounty. Like muted music, the images evoke the restless speed and confusion of a complex socio-political landscape, and the multiple urban anxieties in permanent mutation.
Ever since the arduous apartheid days, David Koloane has been
actively providing spaces to black artists in South Africa as well as making
the plight visible in his own works. His is a human quest: people are pivotal
in the rich arena of his paintings, depicted by means of expressive strokes and
a hint of surreal undertones.
Such is the case of The Night has a Thousand Eyes where fluorescent eyes emerge from the night scene as prophecies, seeing churchgoers find their way through the dark roads surrounded by stray dogs and the ominous presence of an owl under the full moon’s spell. Mongrels are a recurrent theme that David Koloane has explored to symbolize greed and political brutality, especially in his Mgodoyi Series of 1993. Fighting or simply scavenging around the city, the dogs are the ultimate signifiers of the blind forces of oppression.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
Such is the case of The Night has a Thousand Eyes where fluorescent eyes emerge from the night scene as prophecies, seeing churchgoers find their way through the dark roads surrounded by stray dogs and the ominous presence of an owl under the full moon’s spell. Mongrels are a recurrent theme that David Koloane has explored to symbolize greed and political brutality, especially in his Mgodoyi Series of 1993. Fighting or simply scavenging around the city, the dogs are the ultimate signifiers of the blind forces of oppression.
Text © Gabriela Salgado
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/david_koloane.htm?section_name=pangaea
DAVID KOLOANE
Mass Movement III - 2010
Mixed media on paper - 92 x 109 cm
Mixed media on paper - 92 x 109 cm
PANGAEA: NEW ART FROM AFRICA & LATIN AMERICA AT
SAATCHI GALLERY
