CAPE TOWN SALON: A TRIBUTE TO ROSE KORBER. At the AVA gallery at 35 Church Street. A Group Exhibition, until January 30. DANNY SHORKEND reviews
ROSE KORBER’S pioneering and innovative initiative, namely the Art Salon, bringing together well known and lesser-known South African artists, has been an inspirational end-year arts’ event in the city.
The first was held at the Bay Hotel in Camps Bay in 1992, the first of over twenty further editions. In a tribute to Korber, AVA has put together a number of works based on the salon prototype.
Essentially, an exhibition of this nature, in its diversity gives one a fairly comprehensive overview of the current state of local art.
Rather than suggest a general and underlying direction or philosophical trajectory of such art, I can but hint at many, isolated ideas.
In the first room, one is immediately struck by the two William Kentridge linocuts, deft interrogations of different kinds of lines or mark-making that possibly “correspond” in turn to different experiences of colour or emotional states.
Other works that caught my attention in this section is Giovanna Balla’s wall of forever, a small oil painting of shiny blocks of colour that, as the title indicates, does give one the sense of eternity, the various colour modalities offering a continuity that expands ones field of vision so that the small format in turn appears bigger than it, in fact is.
Another interesting work in this section is Chloe Reed’s etchings, which although difficult to interpret, appear to me to be indicative of the psychological and intellectual disjunction between finding unity and analysing parts or rather between holistic and reductive thinking.
In the main gallery, Paul Edmund’s linocut curiously does not bore in its well-crafted repetitiveness. In fact, one is coaxed, as it were, to check the work for errors, as if at some point the pattern dissipates and a new one, a new order will emerge.
As it so happened, I did not find any such deviations. Perhaps on closer inspection, there may well be – but then such an error may have been consciously produced, in which case it is not an aberration.
A particularly pleasing work is Dave Robertson’s acrylic which at one and the same time can appear to be content rich and simply a beautiful work to harmonise simply on a level of design: well co-ordinated colours, balanced rectangles amidst circular forms, no harsh lines and well-considered surface texture.
This work is flanked by an equally impressive work by Turiya Mgadlela wherein a creative use of stockings, varnish and wood define a surface, which is neither simply a painting nor a sculptural object, but hovers somewhere or as something in between.
Then in the video room there are some high quality short films.
Mostly in Afrikaans, the films, each in their unique way combine visual and verbal language to produce moving, introspective, at times rather macabre and sombre, narratives.
Word and image, or rather the moving image, together with sound combine in striking ways and reflect on love, loss and death.
One important reason why video art is significant is that it offers a space away from the traditional form of the media, pushing its language, more philosophically astute and in many ways, more aesthetically aware.
In the upstairs section, one will find some examples from the creative block, an exercise wherein artists are enjoined to create something within or on a small block surface and indeed, there are some inspiring examples.
There is also a scathing attack on government by cartoonist Zapiro with his usual wit and keen eye that allows for caricature.
I also enjoyed Mongezi Ncaphayi’s screen prints entitled streams of consciousness, which in its linear mobility suggests fractals or maps or neuronal networks, a theme that seems to – perhaps inadvertently – be followed by the adjacent works.
Max Wolpe’s tea still life, an oil painting that seems to disappear in its all over homogeneity, yet as one looks, is such that contrasts and areas of light appear or emerge.
Works from the exhibition were often sold and then replaced during “show time”, yet the AVA’s fitting tribute to Rose Korber, who still continues to consult and sell art, is most welcoming and one would hope the Salon concept continues as it allows a space for local artists, as well as an entry for first time buyers.
Note: From First Thursday January, until the end of the Cape Town Salon exhibition on January 30, the AVA will sell art works marked with a gold sticker for any reasonable offer made.
The Cape Town Salon is made up of works from partner institutions such as the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg and Art Throb, new works on consignment from artists who showcase regularly with the AVA, and, finally, also art works from the AVA store rooms. The latter are marked with a gold sticker, destined for good homes, as they should not return to the store rooms.
David Krut Projects, in collaboration with the AVA, will present MATRIX, an exhibition of editioned works from the David Krut Print Workshop that sheds light on the processes of printmaking.
It coincides with the AVA/Strauss Open Printmaking Studio, at the AVA from June 4 to July 21 and will see the main gallery transformed into an open studio for 32 artists and 7 printmaking specialists.
The selection of works explore a range of different intaglio and relief printing techniques and are exhibited alongside the plates that were used to make them and, in some cases, the trial proofs that show the development of the work.
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