New Works showing at KZNSA Gallery

South Africa Mon 21-02-2011

New Works showing at KZNSA Gallery
By a Correspondent

Three outstanding Durban artists are presenting their new work at the KZNSA MAIN GALLERY. Pascale Chandler, Marianne Meijer and Nicole Pletts have joined forces and created an exhibition of paintings that together provide for a moving and rich viewing experience.

Each artist has chosen to explore one single subject and it is this discipline that distinguishes this striking exhibition. Chandler paints horses, Meijer, faces and Pletts divers, (of the swimming pool diving board variety). Ordinary subjects perhaps, but this is no ordinary exhibition.

^{Horse by Pascale Chandler}

These artists are seasoned veterans and we have come to expect great things from them. Their new works do not disappoint. Despite the distinct differences in subject there is a common theme running through all the work – they are interested in the subtleties of the human psyche and spirit. The horses speak to the vulnerability and fragility of the human soul, the faces to the power of the unconscious and the divers to freedom and the life force we all share.

Chandler’s inspiration emerged from a road trip to the Karoo where she was struck by the empty spaces and the feeling of abandoned places - once sites with history and home to families. The sense of stillness and contemplation was for her a metaphor of the fragility and transitory nature of life.

The symbolic meaning of horses dates back to prehistory. Due to their natural companionship with man in both work and art, the horse is an emblem of our life-force. Traditionally the horse is associated with power, victory and virility. Chandler has chosen to invert these symbols and depicts her horses as fragile and vulnerable – they teeter in space on stick-like legs. She is interested in the skeletal architecture of their anatomy.

They appear constructed in an industrial kind of way rather like the residue of a building construction site. They are not (as are many horse paintings) romanticized. Her technique enhances this ‘mechanicalness’. A thick painting medium is used in a sculptural way burnished to produce a patina more akin to sculpture. This layering and choice of monochromatic tones gives the horses an ethereal, unearthly quality and hence a quiet, moody soulfulness that speaks to our common and collective humanity.

Meijer paints faces that are departures from traditional portraiture. Her interest lies in inventing variations and exploring expressive effects rather than mere depictions. Details become blurred through manipulation of the medium often to the point of abstraction. What is captured is the subtlety and enormous range of human emotion that makes each of us unique yet sharing a common humanity.

She abandons the realistic photographic images and chooses a new way of ‘seeing’ with the minds eye – a process of inward introspection and intuition that gives these works their unique power to move and engage with the viewer. Four distinct series are presented. Firstly a myriad of small (almost miniature) digital prints then large acrylic on paper, smaller digital prints that are deconstructed and finally a haunting series of ‘death masks’.

Pletts has produced a series of male figure studies in the form of swimming pool divers. Figures are her favorite subject and she was drawn to the divers for their movement and the sense of floating in space. The figures are depicted balancing on diving boards and flying high in aerial gymnastics. She paints in her characteristic bold and gutsy way with fresh painterly strokes that magically combine to interpret the subtleties of human flesh. But there is more.

The divers exist in the vacuum of space lending them a curiously existential feel. They are about being, being human, being free, and being courageous. They are also undeniably sensual – erotic almost – this not only because they are naked save for the quintessential black speedo but because her technique is so physical, so tactile. Each brush stroke is a record of the power of the human hand, rather like an archaeological remnant of the act of touching. This is contrasted with the crisp, clean blues that surround them.

Water is universally symbolic of the unconscious and whilst she does not depict the pools themselves we are left with the impression that ‘what goes up must come down’ and that the divers occupy the precarious position of being between the safety of terra fima and the uncertainty of the water below them. The divers are anonymous, faceless. Pletts’s interest lies in their universality and common humanity a theme which unites the work with her fellow exhibitors.

The MEZZANINE GALERY and MULTI-MEDIA ROOM hosts an exhibition by Carmen Sober - ‘GIRL YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE’. Sober is a Wits graduate whose work has be well received on the international arts circuit – the USA, Moscow, Sweden. She has been the recipient of numerous prestigious scholarships and awards most notably the Brait-Everard award in 2009.

Sobers’ work for this award looks specifically at the sensational and fantastic narratives that form the stock material for tabloid journalism and urban legends. Using photography, installation and performance, Sober confronts the viewer with the absurd and the ridiculous.

Her work is centered very much within a theatrical mode. Costume, drag, disguises, mustache, staging, wit, narratives, cliché, and memory, all form part of both the performance and the documentation of her photographs.

The exhibition is a multi-media project consisting of sound, installation, performance, video and photographic works that brings to Durban an outstanding example of a young artists cutting edge approach to art production that brings together art making, technology, social comment and the media.

The KZNSA PARK GALLERY is hosting the launch of the new PARK CONTEMPORARY.

The KZNSA is committed to the development of the visual arts in KZN and is unique in that it is a Public Benefit Organisation. As such the Gallery presents experimental and educational exhibitions of national and international significance.

The launch of the PARK CONTEMPORAY will focus on showcasing the works of professional KZN artists. As such it will provide an art agency function that will serve artists and art lovers and collectors. What will distinguish it from the other KZNSA Gallery spaces is that the exhibition will be an ongoing presentation of up to 30 art works that represent the broad range and diversity of locally produced works.

Artist will show individual or in some case small series of their work. The launch will feature works by Peter Rippon, Carla Da Cruz, Leigh Scott Hempson, John Roome, Michael Croeser, Sibusiso Duma, Sifiso Ka Mkame, Grace Kotze and Coral Spencer Domijan.

EXHIBITION OPENINGS.

MAIN GALLERY: NEW WORKS by Pascale Chandler, Marianne Meijer and Nicole Pletts.
MEZZANINE GALLERY & MULTI-MEDIA ROOM: Carmen Sober – ‘GIRL, YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE’.
PARK GALLERY: Launch of the ‘PARK CONTEMPORARY’ – a showcase of KZN artists.

Exhibitions open 22 February at 6pm, all welcome.
Exhibition closes 13 March, 12pm 2011.
166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood
Enquiries: 031 277 1705
gallery@kznsagallery.co.za
Gallery hours: Tues-Fri 9am to 5pm, Sat 9am-4pm, Sun 10am-3pm.

Posted By: Maggie Otieno

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