On the globe

 

4 - 25 October  2008    

Titus Matiyane / Pieter Swanepoel / Diek Grobler  An exhibition of paintings, panoramas and digital works

 

On the globe reflects preoccupations with vision, surveillance, mobility and marking. Continuously improving and newly emerging technologies enable gazing at and surveying of the earth through various sophisticated means such as telescopes, satellites and navigation instruments. Our globe has being conquered by human beings, its patterns of development are studied and outer space (as well as virtual space) has become the new territory to be explored. 

 In the works on exhibition, planet earth is presented as an industrialised and globalised place that reflects the changing morphology of our time. New sociologies and psychologies of space are continuously created. 

Whilst mapping, measuring and constructing space -- global space -- human beings existing within the boundaries of such continuously expanding space have become avatars. According to Judith Butler, contemporary earthlings roam borderless and boundless space:  the fluidity and nomadism encapsulated in the global transitive body imply a universe-roaming, shape-shifting being.

Similarly, new mythologies evolve in virtual space:  Donna Haraway said the cyborg does not recognise the Garden of Eden, since it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust; therefore digital space is its mythical home.

Still, looming threats such as global warming and apocalyptic psychology linger.

Pieter Swanepoel, Darker than before (Reprise)  I, II, III, 2008. Oil on canvas, 74 x 75cm.

Pieter Swanepoel’s current work investigates the notion of ‘the death of painting’ through a number of avenues, the most obvious being the practice of repetition and its implied boredom. These paintings moreover foreground the Western tradition of landscape and seascape/maritime easel paintings and the notion of the master artist responsible for the making of art works. The absence of the artist’s signature from any of the works as well as the seemingly compulsive manner in which the artist copies himself draw attention to the irony of avant-garde art practices so typical of modernism and postmodernism: while the artist refuses to sign the works the obsessive repetition of images and brush strokes become typical – within a stylistic context – of the artist’s ‘hand’. The fact that the works are presented in a modular (fragmented) format suggests not only the artificial context or all art making, but also comments on the market driven financial value attached to art works, as the paintings could be sold/bought as singular units or as combinations in a number of ways. The artist teaches at the University of Pretoria and lives in Johannesburg.

Titus Matiyane, Johannesburg, City of Gauteng, 2007. Mixed media on canvas, 82 x 208 cm.

Titus Matiyane, an artist of Attridgeville outside Pretoria,  has just completed a world tour of his work with an exhibition entitled Cities of the World, which travelled from December 2007 in Delft, The Netherlands, to Aedesland in Berlin in 2008 and from there to the National Museum of Mali in Bamako. Matiyane creates huge panorama drawings of cities and landscapes from a bird's-eye view. The panoramas, which he has been making since 1990, give the impression that the artist has intimate knowledge of the cities and has observed them aerially, whilst in fact he only flew for the first time in 1998 and works from maps that are commercially available. On exhibition will be panoramas of Johannesburg, Mpumalanga, France, Netherlands and South African township scenes.

Diek Grobler, His Master’s Voice, 2008. C-print on Hahnemühle paper.

Diek Grobler is a multimedia and graphic specialist who lives in Pretoria. The term ‘magic realism’ gets closest to what he attempts to achieve in his work that is inspired by common occurrences which seem insignificant in terms of global, social or political issues, but when scrutinised, contain the essentials of human drama.

The centrepiece of Grobler's work in this show is an animated film "B".  The title refers both to the state of being and B-grade movies which attempt to construct a narrative despite technical and often conceptual shortcomings.  Grobler's ‘B’ intentionally suffers from an incoherent plot, fluctuating visual styles and absurd situations, and draws from various cinematic references.  He comments on the individual's state of being, which, given the current social, political and economic environment, is one of Angst and at least mild panic.