Misheck Masamvu Full Monty, 2022 Oil on canvas Frame: 143 x 129.5 cm
Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Misheck Masamvu’s works allow him to address the past while searching for a way of being in the world. His layered painted surfaces and brushstrokes, which are almost visceral, exist as remnants of the physical act of painting and give the sense that multiple temporalities have been included in one picture plane. Beneath the surface of one painted image, an infinity of others exist. Full Monty is amongst one of the more abstracted paintings within Masamvu’s oeuvre but there are certainly other paintings that have been executed in a similar style and vein. What is most fascinating about these more abstracted works is how Masamvu has utilised space and line within the canvas. Using these aspects and qualities in an abstracted mode, much like Willem de Kooning and other expressionist painters, Masamvu creates an imagined environment that is not associated with any particular geography. Rather, paintings of this nature should perhaps be understood as a psychological landscape – one which points to an alternative reality where each layer of paint, or brushstroke on the canvas, proposes a search to resolve conflicted experiences or decisions.
