David Koloane’s Poetic Expressions now open
JOBURG – The exhibition stands as a commemorative tribute to the life and work of David Koloane.
An exhibition curated by Dr Thembinkosi Goniwe presented by the Standard Bank Gallery launches in Johannesburg a few months after Koloane’s passing. Titled a Resilient Visionary: Poetic expression of David Koloane stands as a commemorative tribute to his life and work.
The exhibition is not only a showcase of a lifetime survey of the work of the renowned South African artist but also marks his enormous contribution to the South African visual art landscape.
“Koloane was not only an important figure in South Africa’s visual art landscape but was also a critical voice that has shaped its contemporary moment. With over five decades working in the visual arts space, Koloane has had an illustrious artistic career that has cemented him as an influential figure in visual arts and legendary in the role he played in creating space for black artists,” said Dr Same Mdluli, Standard Bank Gallery manager.
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In curating the show, Goniwe has selected artworks by Koloane from the artist’s own personal collection, works that belong to the artist’s estate. The exhibition is thus modelled as a pictorial monograph that sheds panoramic insight on his creative and intellectual trajectory.
“Foregrounded is Koloane’s artistic practice, particularly his aesthetic inclinations and visual vocabulary with which he interrogates the socio-political and existential human condition,” added Goniwe.
“Thus, the significance of his unrelenting search for a visual language that is expressive, evocative and poetic in articulating his preoccupation with the urban life of Johannesburg, a disparate city constitutive of suburbia and townships. This is a Johannesburg that Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall dub the elusive metropolis, owing to its enduring restlessness, influx, mutation, affluence, indigence, ambivalence and challenges.”
In prioritising Koloane’s artistic practice, this exhibition investigates his discursive sensibilities characteristic of sociopolitically reflective modernism whose imagery intersects scenes of everyday rituals, distortive figurations and abstractive forms all of whose renditions give life to novel worlds of artistic representations. Of significance is Koloane’s struggle and triumph, not only in search of a poetic and reflective visual grammar but also what it means to be modern black subjects under colonial apartheid and democracy.
The exhibition is now open to the public and closes on 6 December.
Details: Standard Bank Gallery 011 636 6886
