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conditions | Nolan Oswald Dennis

07 August - 11 September 2021
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

Goodman Gallery is pleased to present conditions, Nolan Oswald Dennis’ third solo exhibition with Goodman Gallery.

The exhibition presents a new series of works centered around the figure of the globe. Incorporating the shape into various configurations, Dennis presents different perspectives on our familiar world as a means toward imagining new possibilities.

“Within this burning planet has always existed another world, and the struggle to realise it,” says Dennis. “The logic of colonial cosmology insists on the universality of the Western world: a planet rendered as private property, as social violence, as deliberate crisis. Occupying the same space and time as the colonial planet are other worlds. A planet rendered whole as indigenous land and life; a queer planet rendered just, feminist, socialist; a planet facing south, and east, and waterward. Altogether an ecology of black planets – a black cosmography (where black is a vector that opens toward hidden conditions of space and time).”

Artworks

altered calabash, black primer, cowry shell veil on steel and aluminium stand
Work: 167.5 x 21.2 x 21.2 cm
altered PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish and black primer with welded steel, spent charcoal and gypsum base
Work: 162 x 28 x 28 cm
Unavailable
Compounded PET globe model, synthetic stone finish, black primer and cowry shell veil
Work: 54.2 x 20.8 x 20.8 cm
altered PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish, black primer, cowry shell veil and articulated stand
Work: 78 x 23 x 14 cm
Unavailable
altered PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish and white primer
Work: 30 x 23 x 14 cm
altered PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish and black primer
Work: 30 x 23 x 14 cm
compound PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish and black primer
Work: 34 x 83 x 20 cm
Unavailable
plaster and concrete model
Work (each): 18.2 x 22.2 x 19.7 cm
altered calabash and PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish, black primer, cowry shell veil and aluminium rod
Work: 28.3 x 97.1 x 32.2 cm
Unavailable
compound PET plastic globe model, synthetic stone finish, black primer and steel rod
Work: 220 x 30 x 30 cm
Unavailable

Films

About

Nolan Oswald Dennis image

Nolan Oswald Dennis

Nolan Oswald Dennis (b. 1988, Zambia) is a para-disciplinary artist from Johannesburg, South Africa. Their practice explores what they call ‘a black consciousness of space’: the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization.

Dennis’ work questions the politics of space (and time) through a system-specific, rather than site-specific approach. They are concerned with the hidden structures that pre-determine the limits of our social and political imagination. Through a language of diagrams, drawings and models they explore a hidden landscape of systematic and structural conditions that organise our political sub-terrain. This sub-space is framed by systems which transverse multiple realms (technical, spiritual economic, psychological, etc) and therefore Dennis’ work can be seen as an attempt to stitch these, sometime opposed, sometimes complimentary, systems together. To read technological systems alongside spiritual systems, to combine political fictions with science fiction.

Dennis’ is the 2016 winner of the FNB Arts Prize, and has exhibited in various solo and group shows, including the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016), the Young Congo Biennale (2019), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Architekturmuseum der TU München, Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and ARoS Aarhus (Denmark). They were the 2020 artist in residence at NTUCCA (Singapore) and the 2021 artist in residence at the Delfina Foundation (London).

Dennis’ work featured at the Liverpool Biennale with their installation, ‘no conciliation is possible (working diagram)’ in 2023, as well as Kunsthalle Bern and Van Abbe Museum. Dennis also participated in the 12th edition of the Seoul Mediacity Biennale as well as the ‘back wall project’ at the Kunsthalle Basel.

Download full CV