William KentridgeNO, IT IS
In March and April of 2012, William Kentridge delivered a series of six lectures, the Charles Eliot Norton lectures, at Harvard University. In June The Refusal of Time, a 5-channel video installation with complex soundscape by Philip Miller and a breathing machine, was first presented at Documenta (13) in Kassel, Germany. In October the survey exhibition William Kentridge: Fortuna opened in Rio de Janeiro. In November The Refusal of Time was seen at MAXXI in Rome, and the related theatre piece Refuse the Hour was performed to sell-out audiences in both Rome and Athens.
The current exhibition of recent work at Goodman Gallery Cape, the first in Cape Town for five years, sets elements from these projects together with new work made especially for the exhibition – allowing the gallery to be the space where different bodies of work collide and make new connections.
NO, IT IS
The flipbook, NO, IT IS, designed by Fourthwall and co-published with the Goodman Gallery, was the start of a new project of making flipbooks and flipbook films. Both book and films are seen for the first time in this exhibition.
A special edition of the flipbook NO, IT IS comes with an original drawing of one of the pages made for the book.
A selection of pages used in making both book and films are choreographed into panels of between two and fifty drawings each.
RUBRICS
Rubrics, a series of red silkscreened texts, punctuate the room. The phrases were both prods for and are remnants of the series of six Norton lectures presented at Harvard University, and were printed at Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg.
INDIGENOUS TREES
A series of large drawings of trees in Indian ink analyse the form of different trees indigenous to southern Africa. Drawn across multiple pages from books, each drawing is put together as a puzzle – the single pages first painted, then the whole pieced together.
UNIVERSAL ARCHIVE
The ink brush mark is picked up in selected prints from a series of recent linocuts made at David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg, _Universal Archive_. Each print was made first as an ink drawing on paper; the image was transferred to lino and then cut, the fluid mark of brush and ink translating into the medium of linocut.
Four collage lithographs of typewriters, similarly derived from ink drawings, were printed by The Artists’ Press in White River, as were a series of smaller stone lithographs.
The two Colour Chart prints, also a translation from ink drawings, were printed by the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg.
THE SINGER & OTHER MOVING SCULPTURES
A company of kinetic sculptures have their origins in the project _The Refusal of Time_, and were constructed from megaphones, bicycle wheels, sewing machines, bellows, tripods, drums. A Singer sewing machine performs music composed by Philip Miller, as does a rack of drums, with software design and circuitry for both done by Janus Fouché. Design and construction of machines by Christoff Wolmarans and Chris-Waldo de Wet.
Four small bronze sculptures cast at Workhorse Bronze Foundry in Johannesburg fragment and gather form as they are viewed from different angles.
VINYL
A limited edition vinyl of Philip Miller’s musical soundscape for The Refusal of Time comes accompanied by an ink drawing by William Kentridge, and is presented in a box designed and made by Lunetta Bartz.
BOOKS
There are five publications from the past year available at the gallery:
NO, IT IS, a flipbook published by Fourthwall Books, Johannesburg, and Goodman Gallery (also in a special edition)
The Refusal of Time, a document of the creative process for the project of the same name, published by Xavier Barral, Paris
Artworks
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Artist Bio
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre, and opera productions.
In 2024, in Venice, Kentridge premiered a new nine-episode video series, 'Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot' — a site-specific installation curated by long-time collaborator and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation. Following this, in October, MUBI presented the New York premiere of 'William Kentridge’s Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot'.
In conjunction with the world premiere of his newly commissioned opera, 'The Great Yes, The Great No', which debuted at LUMA Arles in July 2024, the solo exhibition 'Je n’attends plus' (I’m Not Waiting Any Longer) presented a collection of major works, some of which had not previously been seen in Europe.
Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2022. An iteration of the exhibition opened at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in May 2024. In the same year, Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, 'In Praise of Shadows', at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023, the exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
In 2025, he presented 'The Pull of Gravity' at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, marking the first museum presentation outside South Africa to focus on his sculpture.
Most recently, he opened 'The Battle Between YES and NO' at Kunsthalle Praha, his first major exhibition in Czechia.
Kentridge’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 1990s, including at Kunsthalle Praha (2026); Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2025); Museum Folkwang (2025); LUMA Foundation, France (2024); Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, Venice (2024); Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2024); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999, 2005, 2010); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2010); Musée du Louvre, Paris (2010); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015); Kunstmuseum Basel (2019); and Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019). The artist has also participated in major biennales, including Documenta, Kassel (1997, 2002, 2012) and the Venice Biennale (1993, 1999, 2005, 2013, 2015).
Public collections include MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; and Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.
Kentridge lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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