UN-LOCKED NARRATIVES

Published 30 July 2024 in Thomarts Gallery

Thomarts Gallery

UN-LOCKED NARRATIVES

We live in a country where cellphones are snatched from cars, bags, houses and even while you still on a call, yes absolutely, seen it with my own eyes, the VW Polo boys ransacked Sandton for a while. The perpetrators digest that even if the phone gets locked by the network operator there are phone experts from Pakistan and Nigeria who can unlock the device to operate on the network of any chosen carrier, even beating the RICA process off its high stilettos.

In this curated group show, the profile of each artist is suited, if not entwined to the character, personality and aura of a device. United by their unique niche, the creativity operates on a networked level.

While each and every device looks the same, a closer scrutiny frequently bares the model and each model comes with the same characteristics that have been upgraded in quality. Manmade but very classically effective. We hardly get reliable and effective human beings in society like our devices, therefore being the reason, that the present and future is / are robotic. Need I mention AI, no, not here.

Artists are devices of themselves and operate themselves. Once a device is operated by another device, it loses itself. Originality of art is often compromised when galleries own artists and tell them how to do it to make a sale. A Samsung device or Apple device connects with ease to is own like it is flesh and bone of its own kind. So do artists connect to artist owned art galleries. The language, the concerns, the treatment, the respect, the upliftment and what have you are genuine and not based on profit but passion and originality. The freedom and genuineness of same kind devices coming together brings forth satisfying results.

This group show marking our Art Gallery launch in Cape Town is a mixture of individual skills , each on its own path and lane that ignites a fermentation of congruous blends, complementing Venetian tastes from our Honourable Senior Minister of Food, Chef Ben from Down Under, and the syncopation of complex chords from the jazz music band Jazz Essay Live, executed with a subtlety that balances the mission of the eventful opening night.

The synchronous sculptures of Mathias Hornung are finely in tune with an intricate rawness that complements both literature, architecture and art. The works are strong yet palatable. My point of reference to his skill are nothing short of the past and the future, delving between the first innovation of a house phone to the Apple iPhone. Mathias engineered works range from functional art to display art, from minor executions to the major. Across the board, a silent whisper yet audible, embraces to kiss the variance of the paintings by Moses Salihou.


If Moses Salihou was a phone device, l’d epitomise him as a Google pixel phone. His works have the simplicity and the capacity of memory to remind first the artist, about his daily routine to execute clarity and beauty in an almost playful manner like a pocket dial that was never expected, while driving his audience to nostalgic moments and playful puzzles. His works verge between real and almost surreal, yet it does not contrast but joyfully anthemises the vocal cords of the grouped artists’ showing into a symphony of expressions.

The works compliment each other as a new ringtone, melodiously to coincide with the colourful and vibrant works of Zolile Petshane, the tranquil and dreamy pieces of Mark Madimola that invigorate the audience as the peaceful soul of the artist. These are Soul- potraits of Modimola, l often say that artists strip themselves naked before their audience through their works without even seeing it. Each work goes with a part of the creator.

Last but not least, the black and white photography of the late Phillipe Koudjina dazzles its audience through his colourful soul that influenced his subjects. He had a way with people that he caught off guardedly through his magical lens, even though they had posed for him. He always looked for that effortlessness, the nature of that soul. Very making line up of artists, not forgetting the works on show by Nkosinathi Thomas Ngulube. His works reveal to us the reduction of visual facts that bring forth only emotion, cognisance of a variety of imagined visual facts and beauty.

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