David Krut Projects's Posts - neofundi2024-03-28T08:38:27ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNursehttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1550371165?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=3tjwie6f34zu9&xn_auth=noTeaser Video - Faith47, Fragments of a Burnt Historytag:www.neofundi.com,2012-11-06:6394384:BlogPost:822512012-11-06T12:44:20.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<div class="description_wrapper"><div class="description"><p class="first">Teaser video in preperation for Faith47's solo exhibition on the 8th of November 2012. <br></br> 'Fragments of a Burnt History' at the David Krut Projects in Johannesburg.</p>
<p class="first"><br></br>SHOW OPENS 8 NOVEMBER, 6.30pm<br></br>David Krut Projects, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg</p>
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<p>Filmed and Produced by Rowan Pybus<br></br> Music - 'Jim comes to Joburg' by Dolly Rathebe…</p>
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<div class="description_wrapper"><div class="description"><p class="first">Teaser video in preperation for Faith47's solo exhibition on the 8th of November 2012. <br/> 'Fragments of a Burnt History' at the David Krut Projects in Johannesburg.</p>
<p class="first"><br/>SHOW OPENS 8 NOVEMBER, 6.30pm<br/>David Krut Projects, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg</p>
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<p>Filmed and Produced by Rowan Pybus<br/> Music - 'Jim comes to Joburg' by Dolly Rathebe</p>
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<p><iframe width="500" height="281" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/52793104?badge=0" frameborder="0"></iframe>
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<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/52793104">FRAGMENTS OF A BURNT HISTORY - TEASER _ 2012</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/faith47">FAITH47</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
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</div>Stephen Hobbs – Dazzle Plans – Exhibition presented by Parts and Labourtag:www.neofundi.com,2012-11-06:6394384:BlogPost:823392012-11-06T12:30:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><strong><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/stephen-hobbs-dazzle-plans-exhibition-presented-by-parts-and" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562580339?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="332"></img></a></strong></p>
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<p><strong>EXHIBITION | November 2nd – December 15th | By appointment</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/stephen-hobbs" target="_blank">Stephen Hobbs’</a> preoccupation with camouflage typologies as visual surrogates for Johannesburg’s inherently disruptive nature has extended…</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/stephen-hobbs-dazzle-plans-exhibition-presented-by-parts-and" target="_blank"><img width="332" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562580339?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="332" class="align-center"/></a></strong></p>
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<p><strong>EXHIBITION | November 2nd – December 15th | By appointment</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/stephen-hobbs" target="_blank">Stephen Hobbs’</a> preoccupation with camouflage typologies as visual surrogates for Johannesburg’s inherently disruptive nature has extended into a range of mixed media projects, from large scale all over building paintings to conceptual sculptural works. <em>Dazzle Plans,</em> an exhibition in collaboration with <a href="http://partsandlabour.co.za/" target="_blank">Parts & Labour</a>, is a moment of pause from Hobbs’ studio where a selection of dazzle concepts are displayed for the celebration of the seductive nature of Dazzle Camouflage itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><a href="http://partsandlabour.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=df1c9b68f9af18df3b9a0844d&id=1f9f0545ab&e=037105f328" target="_blank">Razzle Dazzle</a> as it was referred to in the early 1900’s, was applied in myriad versions to gunships, with the intention of disturbing enemy sites on a target, the zebra like pattern effect would appear to fragment the gunship from different angles.</p>
<p>As warship camouflage, Dazzle patterning was more or less discontinued after World War One. In Hobbs’ case his enquiry into the design possibilities of Dazzle, brings to mind the role that aesthetics has played in the creation of deception on the battlefield (made by artists in the military). But more importantly the ironic potential such design forms present for a visual critique of dystopian urban conditions.</p>
<p>For more works and information on Stephen Hobbs click <a title="Stephen Hobbs" href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/stephen-hobbs">here</a>.</p>Faith47, Fragments of a Burnt History at David Krut Projects, Parkwoodtag:www.neofundi.com,2012-10-05:6394384:BlogPost:803592012-10-05T11:00:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/faith47-fragments-of-a-burnt-history-at-david-krut-projects" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562566434?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600"></img></a></p>
<p>SHOW OPENS 8 NOVEMBER</p>
<p>Faith47’s <em>Fragments of a Burnt History</em> is comprised of an installation of found objects and artwork created in the artist’s studio, as well as a new series of monotypes produced in collaboration with the David Krut Print Workshop. Faith47, based in Cape Town, is a recognised street artist whose work can be…</p>
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/faith47-fragments-of-a-burnt-history-at-david-krut-projects" target="_blank"><img width="600" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562566434?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>SHOW OPENS 8 NOVEMBER</p>
<p>Faith47’s <em>Fragments of a Burnt History</em> is comprised of an installation of found objects and artwork created in the artist’s studio, as well as a new series of monotypes produced in collaboration with the David Krut Print Workshop. Faith47, based in Cape Town, is a recognised street artist whose work can be found in cities all over the world. She has an established international gallery career, with exhibitions in Europe, America and Australia, but <em>Fragments of a Burnt History</em> is her first solo exhibition in South Africa, indicating a culture of cross-over from street to studio that is already well underway abroad.</p>
<p>The street and the studio are essentially two very different environments. In moving a practice directly from street to studio, what is lost is the context that inspired its creation in the first place and formed an integral part of its existence – the reality of the inner-city, the work of other artists and street poets, the humdrum of traffic, rubble, decay and, perhaps most importantly, traces of the people that interact with the city and the work. While her roots lie in street art and her inspiration in urban environments, in her on-going and dynamic transitional process from street to studio, Faith47 has retained the heart of her street work. Although necessarily accessed in altogether different contexts, the grit of the inner-city has been incorporated into the studio work.</p>
<p>The body of work presented in this exhibition is, appropriately, drawn from the artist’s experience of her own country, particularly the city of Johannesburg. Although the work is not a direct interpretation of the city, her experience is of Johannesburg as a representative African city, the streets full of the energy of transformation and endless possibility, but also the evidence of the harsh realities of day to day life. In her street painting in Johannesburg over the years, Faith47 has concentrated on the process of making the work, and the spaces she can explore in order to find appropriate locations for her paintings. She describes having painted for hours ‘in empty buildings that felt like spiritual experiences, exploring holy chambers of neglected architecture…finding something so beautiful in what society disregards, and bringing to life that which people usually throw away or ignore.’* As a result of this approach, she has accumulated masses of reference material – phrases scrawled on the walls of abandoned buildings, illustrations under bridges, political slogans on structures in city centres and on roadsides.</p>
<p>These textures of the streets are incorporated into her studio work, which becomes a combination of her signature graphic style and marks left behind by people who were in those locations before her. Faith47 is deeply connected to these environments through her interactions with them – in her street work she is a commentator who, alongside others, draws attention to alternate realities on the streets. In her studio work she acts as a medium, bringing the voices of those commentators into a different context, for consumption by a different audience. She has also incorporated fragments of signage found on the streets into the work on this show. Many of them are words and symbols that a local of any South African city would recognise immediately – from warnings on residential gates, to pasted advertisements for herbals doctors and flyers for low-interest cash loans. In her appropriation of them alongside her own visual images, she unravels and complicates their meanings, delivering a real sense of the streets – ‘busy, busting, full of detail and signage and mismatched symbols and memories piled on top of each other.’</p>
<p>The installation of the exhibition adds to this sense of full-to-bursting bustle. One wall of the gallery is entirely filled with found wood, objects and artworks, closely packed together. The installation, although made up of many different pieces, appears as one work, jam-packed with complex detail. The chaos of the installation is at first overwhelming, much like busy city streets themselves, but it is by no means impenetrable. Once one has moved beyond the jolt of the initial commotion one is able to get lost in the details, finding overlapping stories and meanings in the juxtaposition of elements within the whole.</p>
<p>Her sensitivity to the environments through which she moves (and to which her gallery audience most often does not have access) allows her to present observations and critiques of the realities of existence on the streets without sensationalising the very real positions of the anonymous characters that emerge in her work. <em>Fragments of a Burnt History</em> presents many elements of living in South Africa that carry with them long lists of weighty connotations – of establishment, security, spirituality and the fragility of political and ideological devices of control, often disconnected from the people they are designed to govern – the people on the streets. The installation of work communicates the emotion that Faith47 experiences in the streets, which tell her ‘a real, hard and beautifully sad story.’ The nostalgic architecture of the city is present in the work, and the sense that the ‘history of the city is etched deep into its streets’ – the works are fragments of this history, containing signs of the dynamic transition that has been, at times, reeling and painful, but has also been honest, allowing itself to be offered up for comment and consumption. The voices of the people that occupy this symbolic South African city, incorporated into Faith47’s own voice, allow her work to function as a re-presentation of the street itself.</p>
<p>- Jacqueline Nurse, September 2012</p>
<p>*All quotes taken from correspondence with the artist.</p>
<p><a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/exhibitions/2012-11-1_faith-47_proj-js" target="_blank">See more here.</a></p>Lynda Ballen, Concerning Preciousness at David Krut Projects, Parkwoodtag:www.neofundi.com,2012-10-05:6394384:BlogPost:803562012-10-05T11:00:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/lynda-ballen-concerning-preciousness-at-david-krut-projects" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562566361?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="650"></img></a> 11 October - 3 November</p>
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<p>David Krut Projects is pleased to present <em>Concerning Preciousness</em>, a solo exhibition by Lynda Ballen. The exhibition will be opened by Walter Oltmann.</p>
<p>Lynda Ballen’s work grapples with centuries old philosophical issues that attend the enterprise of mining. The works in <em>Concerning…</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/lynda-ballen-concerning-preciousness-at-david-krut-projects" target="_blank"><img width="650" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562566361?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="650" class="align-center"/></a>11 October - 3 November</p>
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<p>David Krut Projects is pleased to present <em>Concerning Preciousness</em>, a solo exhibition by Lynda Ballen. The exhibition will be opened by Walter Oltmann.</p>
<p>Lynda Ballen’s work grapples with centuries old philosophical issues that attend the enterprise of mining. The works in <em>Concerning Preciousness</em> pay homage to the Renaissance geological scientist and theorist Georgius Agricola and appropriate the drawings from his texts to acknowledge traditional European linear techniques and explore the graphic aesthetic as a potential for narrative. Ballen, working in ink and glitter as opposed to the traditional woodcut medium, traces these lines onto intricately constructed handmade paperworks which describe the despoiling of nature for humanity’s gain, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the value of these subterranean metals and gems. These paperworks are created from recycled archival paper and metallic substances which seek to draw attention to the nature of workmanship and the crafted object, while the use of threads and plaited fibre allude to the value inherent in traditional African textiles, but, moreover, as a metaphor for the preciousness of the earth’s surface.</p>
<p>As contemporary South African visual art statements these objects engage with the apparent polarized concepts of art and craft and the traditional African and historical European aesthetic ideologies. Most significantly, these works confront the contentious current issues and environmental concerns posed by mining.</p>
<p>There will be a walkabout with the artist at the gallery on Saturday 13 October at 11h00.</p>Virginia MacKenny, Waymarker at David Krut Projects, Cape Towntag:www.neofundi.com,2012-10-05:6394384:BlogPost:805562012-10-05T10:30:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/virginia-mckenny-waymarker-at-david-krut-projects-cape-town" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562568740?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600"></img></a></p>
<p>2 November – 1 December 2012</p>
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<p>In response to her deepening concern at our disconnection from the natural world artist Virginia MacKenny is undertaking a six-week walk along the French section of ancient pilgrimage route commonly known as the Camino. Dedicating her walk to the Earth and all living beings MacKenny follows the Via…</p>
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/virginia-mckenny-waymarker-at-david-krut-projects-cape-town" target="_blank"><img width="600" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562568740?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>2 November – 1 December 2012</p>
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<p>In response to her deepening concern at our disconnection from the natural world artist Virginia MacKenny is undertaking a six-week walk along the French section of ancient pilgrimage route commonly known as the Camino. Dedicating her walk to the Earth and all living beings MacKenny follows the Via Lemovicensis, a lesser-trod route on the Way of St James ending in Santiago de Compostella. Starting at the UNESCO heritage site of the Romanesque church of Vezelay and wending her way through Limousin, the Dordogne and towards the Spanish border her aim, rather than to reach any particular destination, is to devote both the time and the action of walking to making contact with the earth in an literal act of grounding. Carrying with her the prayers and dedications of other environmentally concerned artists and individuals, this ‘meditation on the move’ is an embodiment of belief, calling into play the physical, mental and spiritual in a process that MacKenny sees as part of an holistic artistic practice. While she sees this particular perambulation as an artistic act in its own right she also responds to artistic tradition by carrying with her a limited palette of blue watercolours (a reference to cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s statement that from space “…the earth looks small and blue”). Making an image a day on a postcard size piece of paper with the intention of sending these back to South Africa MacKenny gestures both to the history of travellers recording their journeys in the days before the camera (watercolour is lightweight and dries quickly) as well as responding directly to Susan Hiller’s idea that creative work is a form of “letters home”. Recording both the outer and inner topography of her journey MacKenny’s emphasis is on treading lightly, seeking an artistic practice that does not just record or translate experience, but one that is a means to re-enliven both herself and her engagement with the world around her and of which she is a part.<br/> <br/> She exhibits the work produced on the walk and other paintings reflecting her considerations of a world in jeopardy in her exhibition Waymarker at David Krut Projects, Cape Town at the Montebello Design Centre in Newlands opening October 20, 2012.<br/> <br/> This project, while it is more physically engaged, follows on from MacKenny’s on-going interest in examining the intersection of different visual conventions (illusionism and flatness occupying the same frame), and the conflation of potentially oppositional vocabularies which provide a locus for exploring perception within a worldview that is personal yet contextually aware. Her works investigate ‘solastalgia’ – a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the effects of global warming on the mental states of Australians. The combination of solacium (comfort) and algia (pain) infers an emotional disquiet that results from nostalgia firmly rooted in the now. The pain of nostalgia comes from taking comfort in the things that have given one pleasure in the past, but realising that those things are no longer. Solastalgia, however, indicates a present that is becoming a past before one’s very eyes; the environment, which we imbue with so much meaning, is disappearing as we watch it.<br/> <br/> MacKenny describes painting as a ‘journey of getting to know oneself and the world’ as she never really knows what each painting will contain. She begins knowing only a few elements of the painting, and allows the rest to surface as she works. MacKenny feels that this ‘vagueness of thought’ is necessary, as it ‘ensures outcomes that are not predetermined. Released from the straitjacket of expectation or intent, an apparently gratuitous connection between similar looking things may prove unexpectedly fruitful.’<br/> <br/> The ecological concerns extrapolated in MacKenny’s paintings are ‘about caring, not necessarily posturing’ – underlined by a conception that the human species is care-less – without care, for ourselves, for our environment, for the things that surround us. It is out of an increasing need to become care-full that MacKenny’s concerns are borne. The delicate network of connections that is formed between the objects floating in her enormous canvasses contain meaning, in themselves, because they are every-day objects to which most people can relate. The paintings cause emotional (solastalgic) disquiet as a result of their sense of alienation and isolation: their dream-like quality speaks of a fragile reality that is fast becoming a fantasy. In connecting up the dots between each familiar (and sometimes dramatic) image, one becomes isolated: either one is isolated as in dreaming we are disconnected from reality; or, one is isolated from reality because what we imagine as reality has slipped away and all one is left with is our dream of how things were. MacKenny chooses to use everyday objects to express these concerns because, too often, the big stories and the grand gestures appear to us outside our personal worlds. What MacKenny aims to do, is to bring the big concerns back to quotidian reality.<br/> <br/> Virginia MacKenny is a Senior Lecturer in Painting at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. A practicing artist she has received a number of awards including the Volkskas Atelier Award (1991) and the Ampersand Fellowship in New York (2004). She also writes on contemporary South African art was a previous KZN editor for <a href="http://www.artthrob.co.za" target="_blank">www.artthrob.co.za</a>. A critic and curator she was a national selector for Spier Contemporary 2007. In 2010 she was a recipient of a Donald Gordon Creative Arts Award and curated ‘Threshold’ (2011) an exhibition on artists in South Africa concerned with environmental and climate change issues. Interested in Eco-feminism and environmental issues in a Pan-African context she is currently researching artists engaging environmentalism for a book on the same topic.</p>
<p><a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/exhibitions/2012-11-12-dkct-virginia-mackenny-waymarker" target="_blank">See more here.</a></p>Robyn Penn, Exit at David Krut Projects, Parkwoodtag:www.neofundi.com,2012-08-28:6394384:BlogPost:779612012-08-28T12:00:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/robyn-penn-exit-at-david-krut-projects-parkwood" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562545544?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600"></img></a></p>
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<p>Opening Thursday 30 August, 6.30pm at David Krut Projects, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg.</p>
<p><em>Exit</em> is <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/robyn-penn">Robyn Penn</a>’s second solo exhibition at David Krut Projects, following <em>Pretty World</em> at Arts on Main in November 2011. In this new body of paintings Penn…</p>
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/robyn-penn-exit-at-david-krut-projects-parkwood" target="_blank"><img width="600" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562545544?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600" class="align-center"/></a></p>
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<p>Opening Thursday 30 August, 6.30pm at David Krut Projects, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg.</p>
<p><em>Exit</em> is <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/robyn-penn">Robyn Penn</a>’s second solo exhibition at David Krut Projects, following <em>Pretty World</em> at Arts on Main in November 2011. In this new body of paintings Penn continues her exploration of the sublime through multiple images, but has made significant formal and conceptual departures.</p>
<p>Penn consistently uses photographs as references for series of works, creating new works from the same image as a way to “push the image, coming back to it again and again; re-seeing it, re-imagining it.” Both for <em>Pretty World</em> and for this new work, images of clouds taken by Eadward Muybridge have proved an appropriate starting point not only because his subject matter resonates with Penn, but also because his repetitive use of clouds is similar to her own. Working in the 19th century, Muybridge would photograph dramatic cloudscapes, which he would then add to his landscapes using a method of manual “Photo-shopping,” often re-using the same clouds in different images, in order to provide depth. For Penn, clouds present a metaphor for distraction from the chaos happening on the ground. They also satisfy an interest in the Romantic sublime, notably evident in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Her thoughts on these overlapping refrains have led her to consider other images relating to powerful and potentially disastrous cloudscapes added directly or indirectly to the natural world by humankind. Following on from <em>Pretty World</em>, Penn has sourced images of mushroom clouds, shuttle launch clouds, volcanic ash and implosion clouds which, removed from their original contexts, appear as quite innocuous and very beautiful formations.</p>
<p>This body of work also features paintings of fire escape structures that have fascinated Penn for similar reasons – as inoffensive structures used exclusively for emergency escape. For Penn, the metaphorical connection between the two kinds of imagery relates to the “ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy of sky [that] cause the here-and-now to dissolve to some extent. We exit to or from, escape to or from something. In both there is always an element of hope. We no longer live in Friedrich’s naively romantic world. We live in a world of crisis where shuttles escape Earth’s gravity, the threat of mushroom clouds looms large and solitary clouds drift across blue skies.”</p>
<p>The ambiguities of both clouds and fire escapes are important to Penn as she has focused her interest in the science of how we see. Specific areas within the visual cortex are responsible for seeing movement, shape and colour; information received by the eyes is broken up and synthesised into patterns and forms in a predictable way. Similarly, in reproducing images from photographic source material, Penn breaks the images up into tones, lines and shapes, according to the way that she sees them. In this body of work, rather than smooth away the evidence of this process, Penn has allowed the marks and traces of the under-painting to show through, thereby complicating the <em>trompe l’oeil</em> effect.</p>
<p>On a personal level, Penn’s daily practice in her home studio mirrors the repetitive nature of domesticity, but is also an escape from the mundane. Once her reference images are selected, working and re-working them becomes a meditation similar to the distraction of cloud gazing. In this body of work, her movement away from faithful figurative representation is also symbolic, in a sense, of an escape from realism.</p>
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<p>For more information about the exhibition, <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/exhibitions/2012-8-9_robyn-penn_proj-js" target="_blank">click here</a>.</p>Senzo Shabangu, Amandla! at David Krut Projects, Arts on Maintag:www.neofundi.com,2012-08-28:6394384:BlogPost:779002012-08-28T12:00:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/senzo-shabangu-amandla-at-david-krut-projects-arts-on-main" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562565648?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600"></img></a></p>
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<p><a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/senzo-shabangu" target="_blank">Senzo Shabangu</a>‘s exhibition <em>Amandla!</em> opens at David Krut Projects, Arts on Main on 26 August, 2012. <em>Amandla!</em> comprises linocuts and monotypes created while the artist was in residence at David Krut Print Workshop (DKW) during June and July…</p>
<p><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/senzo-shabangu-amandla-at-david-krut-projects-arts-on-main" target="_blank"><img width="600" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562565648?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="600" class="align-center"/></a></p>
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<p><a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/senzo-shabangu" target="_blank">Senzo Shabangu</a>‘s exhibition <em>Amandla!</em> opens at David Krut Projects, Arts on Main on 26 August, 2012. <em>Amandla!</em> comprises linocuts and monotypes created while the artist was in residence at David Krut Print Workshop (DKW) during June and July 2012.</p>
<p><em>“My artistic practice reflects on power and it’s many forms and facets, particularly in the context of Johannesburg, a city that is growing and expanding in unprecedented ways. It inspires me to see how challenging, and, at the same time, provocative the city/ the world we live in is and how having money and power both enables and drives the city of Johannesburg.</em></p>
<p><em>This body of work was inspired by social context, the environment I live in, colour, fear, illusion, natural law, political power and pressure. These ideas have led me to explore the imagery of the “puppets masters”, where the city becomes the theatre set where the drama unfolds, as the master controls his puppets. I don’t know what</em> <em>you think of this, perhaps I got the wrong idea? But I love the idea that the city becomes a theatre, The medium of printmaking linocut and monotypes allows me to explore the pressure of living in Johannesburg, by echoing these ideas around pressure in the medium itself.</em></p>
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<p>For more information about the exhibition, <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/exhibitions/2012-8-9_senzo-shabangu_aom" target="_blank">click here</a>.</p>Maja Maljevic, Ex Nihilo at David Krut Projects, Cape Towntag:www.neofundi.com,2012-08-28:6394384:BlogPost:778962012-08-28T12:00:00.000ZDavid Krut Projectshttp://www.neofundi.com/profile/JacquelineNurse
<p><em><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/maja-maljevic-ex-nihilo-at-david-krut-projects-cape-town" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562565800?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="650"></img></a></em></p>
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<p><em>Ex Nihilo</em> presents a new body of paintings and drawings by <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/maja-maljevic" target="_blank">Maja Maljević</a> for the first time to a Cape Town audience. The show runs from 1 September to 15 October 2012. Please join us for the opening of the show on Saturday 1 September…</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.neofundi.com/profiles/blogs/maja-maljevic-ex-nihilo-at-david-krut-projects-cape-town" target="_blank"><img width="650" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1562565800?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="650" class="align-center"/></a></em></p>
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<p><em>Ex Nihilo</em> presents a new body of paintings and drawings by <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/artists/maja-maljevic" target="_blank">Maja Maljević</a> for the first time to a Cape Town audience. The show runs from 1 September to 15 October 2012. Please join us for the opening of the show on Saturday 1 September at 11.30am at David Krut Projects Cape Town, Montebello Design Centre, 31 Newlands Avenue.</p>
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<p><em>I don’t know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.</em> – Philip Guston</p>
<p>The term <em>ex nihilo</em>, most commonly used in association with concepts of creation of the universe, is a Latin phrase meaning “out of nothing.” Outside of religious and theological contexts, the term is often used to describe anything – a topic of conversation, a solution to a problem – that appears to have no referent or antecedent, therefore seeming to come into existence independently. In this sense, the term is appropriate to the paintings and drawings of Maja Maljević.</p>
<p>Often, the temptation in a viewer of abstract work is to look for clues that can unlock the “meaning” of the painting, or illuminate the source of the artist’s inspiration. An inclination toward narrative leads us, as viewers, to search for objects and concepts to which we can relate. While we may be comfortable with a rejection of representation, and we understand that surface and materiality are pivotal, we struggle to avoid analysing shapes and lines in terms of their similarity or allusion to things we know. Perhaps if we can correctly decipher and connect a number of elements within a painting, we will have access to the intellectual process that brought the painting into being. We will know then what the artist is trying to say, what she thinks about the world.</p>
<p>However, in the case of Maljević’s work, these attempts are quickly frustrated because the work, ultimately, doesn’t “mean” anything at all. This is not to say that the content of the work does not derive in some way from the world. The experiences she has had, the memories she draws on, the dreams that haunt or inspire her inform particular impressions of the world she lives in. No man is an island, so to speak. However, she is a unique filter of this material, and expression of it does not rely on intellectual processes. Rather, her act of creation is experiential and emotive, governed by aesthetic concerns and a sense of balance and proportion that is particular to her.</p>
<p>Although the universe that Maljević creates appears referentially disconnected from the world she inhabits, common threads bind the two. Investigations of the notion of beauty are carried out through faithfulness to Golden ratio proportions and balance of line and colour, for instance. The importance of symmetry, in Darwinian terms, is also revealed as a factor – what role does a search for perfection play in the production of artwork? Evolution itself is evident in the progression of Maljević’s work over time as new configurations are born in each body of work, fed by previous imagery, and some shapes and structures are carried over from one body to the next while others disappear.</p>
<p>Hence, although we think we may recognise a television test pattern, a chess board, an aeroplane or a snow man, following conventional associations with these things ultimately leads nowhere. Maljević is not concerned that the shapes or drips or blocks of colour might resemble things in the world outside the painting – the work is a world in and of itself, appearing to have sprung up <em>ex nihilo</em>.</p>
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<p>To view more images from the exhibition, <a href="http://davidkrutprojects.com/exhibitions/2012-9-10_maja-maljevic_" target="_blank">click here</a>.</p>