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David Koloane | … Also Reclaiming Space

02 December - 09 January 2021
Goodman Gallery, London

“Apartheid was a politics of space more than anything […] and much of the apartheid legislation was denying people the right to move. It’s all about space; restricting space…Claiming art is also reclaiming space” – David Koloane

Goodman Gallery is proud to present … Also Reclaiming Space, marking the first London solo exhibition by the late pioneering South African artist David Koloane. The presentation comprises major paintings and works on paper spanning apartheid and post-apartheid years and continues Cork Street’s legacy of bringing solo exhibitions by art historical figures to UK audiences for the first time. … Also Reclaiming Space expands on this legacy by platforming the work of a towering African artist whose practice has received limited substantial international visibility to date. Koloane is one of the most important artists to come out of South Africa not only for his artistic output but for his dogged personal dedication to ensuring that Black artists had access to a more hospitable environment in which to work and exchange ideas during the apartheid years. He mentored those who responded to the method and material based means of production which spoke of a new art – expressive, emotive and not born of the Western canon. Koloane’s work interrogated key questions around artistic production from the Southern tip of the African continent, namely: “What defines South African expression?” and “What paradigms typify that expression?” These questions, which Koloane penned in the seminal catalogue for Whitechapel Gallery’s Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa in 1995, expressed key concerns of artists working from South Africa. They served as frameworks for shaping how Koloane and his contemporaries resisted and reconfigured how they were received and represented in the larger narrative of modernist art. Koloane’s approach to abstraction was deployed as a means to break away from the visual constraints imposed on African artists, which remain in place to this day. He contested the very idea of an “authentic” African artist and the “notion of struggle art as primarily figurative” (Athi Mongezelili Joja, Artforum 2020). The late South African novelist Nadine Gordimer captured these sensitivities in her introduction for a monograph dedicated to Koloane’s work: “Perhaps it was also a discovery of the beauty of the colour masses, new to his perception, concentrated on the urban world; but it is clear from the complexity of the work that he was exploring the sources to be discovered by imagination both beyond and yet underlying the figurative.” (Nadine Gordimer, TAXI 006: David Koloane, 2002). Through his signature monochrome, on occasion colour-saturated, but always darkly expressive drawings, Koloane interrogated the socio-political circumstances of the apartheid and post-apartheid years and captured the profound impact on the human condition. Adopting restless techniques of motion, his work brings to life an abstract expressionism that conveys the resilient pulse of lives lived on the margins in Soweto and Johannesburg. These poetic works on paper – featured in the exhibition – range from large-scale cityscapes from the 1990s through to the 21st century, as well as evocative portraits of fellow citizens and cultural figures. Koloane’s representations of the city are populated with images of street life, jazz musicians, traffic jams, migration, refugees, dogs, and birds. Through the mediums of painting, drawing, assemblage, printmaking and mixed media, these scenes are a blend of exuberant and sombre, discernible and opaque pictorial narratives. As Gordimer famously put it, Koloane’s representations of the city captured the essence of “the huge oppressions, upheavals [and] hard-won freedoms that have epitomised our cities’ sprawl.”

About the Artist

Artworks

Mixed media on canvas
Image: 160 x 120 x 2.5 cm
Mixed media on paper
Work: 69.8 x 99.8 cm
Mixed media on paper
Work: 69.7 x 99.6 cm

About

David Koloane image

David Koloane

David Koloane (1938 – 2019) was born in Alexandra, Johannesburg, South Africa. Koloane spent his career making the world a more hospitable place for black artists during and after apartheid. Koloane achieved this through his pioneering work as an artist, writer, curator, teacher and mentor to young and established artists at a time when such vocations were restricted to white people in South Africa. A large part of this effort involved the initiatives Koloane helped establish, from the first Black Art Gallery in 1977, the Thupelo experimental workshop in 1985 and the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios in 1991, where he served as director for many years. Koloane also tutored at the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) in 1979 and became the head of the fine art section and gallery from 1985 to 1990.

Through his expressive, evocative and poetic artwork, Koloane interrogated the socio-political and existential human condition, using Johannesburg as his primary subject matter. Koloane’s representations of Johannesburg are populated with images of cityscapes, townships, street life, jazz musicians, traffic jams, migration, refugees, dogs, and birds among others. Imaginatively treated, through the medium of painting, drawing, assemblage, printmaking and mixed media, Koloane’s scenes are a blend of exuberant and sombre, discernible and opaque pictorial narratives.

Koloane’s work has been widely exhibited locally and internationally. In 1999 he was part of the group exhibition _Liberated Voices_ at the National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. In 2013, Koloane’s work was shown on the South African pavilion at the 55th la Biennale di Venezia and on the group exhibition _My Joburg_ at La Maison Rouge in Paris. In 1998, the government of the Netherlands honoured Koloane with the Prince Claus Fund Award for his contributions to South African art. Koloane was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate twice, once from Wits University in 2012, and again from Rhodes University in 2015. In 2019 Koloane was the subject of a travelling career survey exhibition, _A Resilient Visionary: Poetic Expressions of David Koloane_, which opened at IZIKO SANG and later travelled to Standard Bank Gallery and Wits Art Museum in October.

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