rosenclaire / Immaterial Matters / 2012

Immaterial Matters at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg will be rosenclaire’s first exhibition in the city since they left for Italy in 1985. The show is a remix of work from their re.collections show at Goodman Gallery Cape in 2010, work shown recently in Europe and new works created for this exhibition. In 2010 rosenclaire’s neon sign Invest in the Immaterial illuminated Cape Town, Johannesburg and Dakar calling for action that was not an obsessive amassing of material gain and visibility, but rather a virtual rebalancing of the scales. Immaterial Matters takes up from there referring to works that range from the irreverent to the transcendent. The title and the work proffer two ideas: one, that the immaterial is what matters and two it asks a question about relevancy. The medium matters only as a transient messenger of meaning whether it be oil paint, bronze, found objects, games, video or scraps of paper. The work explicitly defies categorisation and sites itself neither on the page nor in the margins but rather questions the materiality of the paper itself. That which is material, the visual plane, is proportionately relevant to that which resonates from it. Thoughts and responses that in their own diverse trajectory move from the political, to tongue in cheek play and repartee with art history to places of quietness and contemplation. The show features works that address the current economic meltdown and sideswipe at the contemporary art world and it’s stock market mentality. In their respective oil paintings and bronzes rosenclaire re-present canons of figurative and abstract modernist work in the context of providing a lintel over the Posts and a lookout point to the great beyond. Art addresses and undresses itself in both form and substance. Matter shifts, changes, mutates as time, desire and fashion dictate. Antimatter is a dualistic hypothesis as is Anti-art that struggles to maintain a position of dissensus in the face of the rampant commodification of art. rosenclaire’s work presents an intimate interlocution between themselves and a viewer where stereotypes are challenged and new perspectives offered. Artistic duo Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky – collectively know as rosenclaire – were both born in South Africa and now live and work between Florence, Johannesburg and Cape Town. They left South Africa in 1985 for Italy, where they established a prestigious art residency programme in Tuscany. They have exhibited extensively both locally and internationally, and their work has featured at major events such as the Dakar Biennale and Spheres in France. Prominent public sculpture commissions include their Soap Boxes at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. As well as conducting artist workshops in Italy and the United States, rosenclaire have returned regularly to South Africa to conduct workshops in Venda and Cape Town.