July 12, 2005
By Mary Alexander
SOUTH Africa's premier artist has headed home. William Kentridge is holding two major exhibitions in Johannesburg this month. Preparing the Flute, at the Goodman Gallery, is an exploration of the artist's interpretation of Mozart's The Magic Flute, and the second is a major retrospective at the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Johannesburg-born Kentridge is South Africa's most famous artist, in demand by the major institutions of the world. Yet he uses an essentially simple technique - charcoal drawings with touches of pastel colour. With these he has created an astonishing body of work.
Kentridge has a passion for his city - and it shows in his work.
"I think Johannesburg works hard, struggles to revive its centre: to not be a city of shopping malls," he told The Star newspaper. "Every project, be it dance or music, is a triumph in itself.
"I am delighted about coming to the Joburg Art Gallery. Hillbrow and Joubert Park are where my grandparents grew up; it is the heart of the city. The gallery is a better and more beautiful space than any of the other museums around the world that have hosted this retrospective."
Since the 1990s Kentridge has gained international recognition for his animated short films based on "erasure": drawing in charcoal, filming a few frames, erasing, then drawing some more.
His work includes powerful etchings, lithographs, silkscreens, collage and sculpture.
Preparing the Flute
In late April this year Kentridge's interpretation of Mozart's
The Magic Flute opened at La Monnaie opera house in Brussels, Belgium.
From this work comes Preparing the Flute, an exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg from 4 to 16 July. It is essentially a collection of drawings, etchings and film forming the basis of Kentridge's explorations for the production.
The artist brings the Brussels theatre in miniature - the working model used in preparation for the opera - into the gallery. Animated sequences from the full-scale production of The Magic Flute are projected on screens inside the theatre, similar to the way they appear on the real stage.
Kentridge usually creates his films and uses a composer to add the score. In this exhibition the composer is Mozart and in Kentridge's interpretation, the character Tamino tames rhinoceroses with his magic flute. Film at the exhibition shows an animated rhino doing balletic circus tricks to Mozart's music.
The exhibition includes many of the working drawings and fragments used in creating the animation for The Magic Flute. These reveal his process of erasing and redrawing to create animated sequences.
"One of the fascinating things about William Kentridge's films is how they let the process show," US art critic Janet Koplos writes in the publication Art in America.
"Because he draws, shoots, erases and shoots again to create his imagery - rather than painting animation cells or digitally developing scenes - I am conscious of his means, even his touch. It was Kentridge's genius to show how the directness of drawing could survive the indirectness of a camera-based art."
William Kentridge Retrospective
His drawings, films, video and sculpture are also on show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until the end of October, in the artist's first retrospective exhibition in his home city.
It was first curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev for the Castello di Rivoli in Turin in early 2004. Later that year and early this year it was seen in Düsseldorf, Sydney and Montreal; after Johannesburg it will travel to Miami.
A survey of Kentridge's body of work with a particular focus on recent art, the retrospective includes drawings dating as far back as 1979, major early animated films and a selection of projections on to objects and furniture. Recent works based on the artist's interest in shadows as well as in the techniques of early cinema are also part of the exhibition.
Partially funded by the City of Johannesburg, the exhibition is accompanied by music by composer Phillip Miller.
It includes a set of short films, Seven Fragments for Georges Melies, and the large bronzes, Shadow Quartet. Kentridge's more familiar films, charcoal drawings and shadow sculptures are also on display.
In the gallery's downstairs auditorium are a series of short films from the late 1980s, Johannesburg, Second Greatest City after Paris. Featuring the artist's characters Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum, the films explore the dark and complex times of late-apartheid South Africa.
Preparing the Flute runs at the Goodman Gallery until 16 July, and the William Kentridge Retrospective at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until 31 October.
For more information, contact the Johannesburg Art Gallery on 011 725 3130 and the Goodman Gallery on 011 788 1113.
Source: The official South African portal: southafrica.info
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