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The 10 best living artists in South Africa. 1
By Andries Loots 13 February
2000
I will start with the most prominent artist this week.
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William Kentridge
( 1955 - )
Born in 1955 in Johannesburg
Studies :
1976 - 78 Johannesburg Art Foundation
1976 - BA Political/African Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
1980 - 82 Theatre Ecole, Paris
Exhibitions:
He has participated in numerous group exhibitions from 1974.
1979 - Market Gallery, Johannesburg first of 11 Solo-exhibitions
1985 - Cape Town Triennial, Cape Town
1985 - Tributaries, touring West Germany and South Africa
1986 - Simon Neuman Gallery, New York, Solo-exhibition
1987 - Standard Bank Young Artist Award
1987 - Vita Quarterly Award Winner
1987 - Vanessa Devessa Gallery, London, Solo-exhibition
1988 - Johannesburg Art Gallery
1989 - Venessa Devessa Gallery, London
1990 - Gallery International, Cape Town
1994 - Stephen Friedman Gallery & A22 Gallery, London
1995 - Praterinsel, Munich, Germany
1995 - Africus Johannesburg Biennale
1995 - Istanbul Biennale, Turkey
1996 - Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg,
1996 - Sydney Biennale, Australia
1997 - Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
1998 - Palais des Beaux-Arts/Paleis voor Schone Kunste Brussels ( Solo )
1998 - The Drawing Center, New York, Solo-exhibition
1998 - Luna Theatre, Brussels
1999 - Museum of Modern Art, New York
1999 - Serpentine Gallery, London
1999 - Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
1999 - Carnegie Medal, USA
2000 - Stephen Friedman Gallery, London April
( Not all exhibitions are listed)
Represented:
Durban Art Gallery
Johannesburg Art Gallery
King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth
Pretoria Art Museum
South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Pietersburg Collection
Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg
University of the Orange Free State
University of Stellenbosch
William Humphreys Art Gallery.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Tate Gallery, London
Carnegie Art Museum, Pittsburgh
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Numerous other major private and corporate collections locally and abroad.
As can be seen from his CV he participated in numerous international
exhibitions. William was the first of our artists to make it onto the front
cover of "Art in America" Jan 99.
" William Kentridge's drawing based works, encompassing animated films,
theater and opera productions, present a uniquely evocative, emblematic view of
the state of South Africa today : from the Truth and reconciliation Commission
hearings to traces of apartheid's violence in the landscape around Johannesburg.
Kentridge's animated films are patiently built up from series of single
drawings, incorporating erasure as well as addition of lines and forms : a
week's drawing can give rise to just forty seconds of animation.
Social-political traumas such as apartheid are narrated through his haunting
imagery. Like early twentieth-century Expressionists such as Max, Beckmann, or
early Soviet artists and filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Kentridge depicts
political realities as they are expressed in terms of the individual human
suffering they produce. Working primarily in drawing, theater, film and
printmaking since the 1970's, Kentridge attracted international critical
attention when his work was presented in 1997 at the Johannesburg and Havana
Biennials and at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany. His work is on view at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, and featured at the Tate Gallery of Modern Art,
London, in 2000. A major touring exhibition of his work will be presented at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New
York and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, during
2001"
William Kentridge, Dan Cameron, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, J.M. Coetzee : ISBN 0 7148 3829 2, Phaidon Press Ltd. 1999
October 13, 2001 - January 6, 2002
"The MCA is co-organizing South African artist William Kentridge's first
survey exhibition in the United States. Kentridge is internationally-renowned
for his animated films, drawings, and theater productions that focus on the
complex and often violent history of his native South Africa and consider the
effect its past will have on its future. This major exhibition will present
eleven of Kentridge's powerful short animated films or "drawings for
projection," the majority of which chronicle the ongoing narrative of two
characters struggling within the apartheid and post-apartheid landscapes. A new
film will premiere with the opening of this exhibition. Approximately fifty
large-scale charcoal drawings utilized in the making of the films will be shown
alongside the projections in addition to a selection of related earlier graphic
works."
The exhibition is
co-organized by the MCA Chicago; the New Museum, New York; and the Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and is co-curated by Staci Boris,
MCA Associate Curator; Dan Cameron, Senior Curator at the New Museum; and Neal
Benezra, Assistant Director for Art and Public Programs at the Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden. The exhibition opens February, 2001 at the Hirshhorn
Museum; May 2001 at the New Museum; and October 2001 at the MCA. It will be
accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue.
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