Anton Kannemeyer
Current Review(s)
'Works on Paper'
Anton Kannemeyer at Stevenson in JohannesburgThere are many exhibitions where one spends only a few seconds at each artwork before trotting off to the next. Those few seconds are often filled with thoughts such as ‘Is that it?’ or, ‘Does it do anything?’ or, ‘It’s just like the last one; let’s hope the next piece will be different.’ This is not the case with the selection of works by Anton Kannemeyer at the Brodie/Stevenson gallery. Each work is quite fresh, and it captivates us with its humour, insight, complexity and, sometimes, quite a bit of text to read.
Kannemeyer is well known for his work, under the alias Joe Dog, in Bitterkomix, a South African satirical magazine. Many of the works in the exhibition are these Joe Dog style cartoon prints and paintings on paper, all of which are infused with cynicism and humour that comment on the state of a postcolonial African society. He sees our society, especially with regards to race, politics and sex, as hypocritical and depraved. However, he is careful not to condemn the society, for if he moralised then he himself would be a hypocrite, as many of his pieces mock the moralists for their unreflective hypocrisy. He avoids the position of a judge and instead assumes the role of an aloof anthropologist who is amused by the follies of the cultures he studies.
Many of the images assume colonial iconographies and styles, from etchings akin to those found in Victorian travelogues to illustrations which show a Tintin-like figure. However, all these artworks are contemporary, intended for a contemporary audience and meant to comment on postcolonial cultures. The overarching message is that colonial attitudes have been inherited by the postcolonial society. The postcolonial society does not supplant the colonial one, but instead is just a sophisticated version of the colonial society, with all its bigotry, hypocrisy, greed and other negative traits.
One cartoon strip, entitled Pappa and the Black Hands (2009), depicts the white colonial male shooting down scores of black natives then proceeding to cut off their hands, all done without the slightest moral compunction. The white man is not portrayed as evil but rather as morally vacuous.
12 November 2009 - 15 December 2009
'A Dreadful Thing is About To Occur'
Anton Kannemeyer at Stevenson in Cape TownI remember when I read 'American Psycho'. There were scenes which described sex in intensive detail, drawing you in, which then suddenly switched to acts of incredible violence. It left me feeling depleted but also complicit. I experienced that violence in a way that I hadn’t experienced mediated violence before. It’s a testament to Bret Easton Ellis’ skill as a writer but also to his abuse of his reader (though the relationship is sado-masochist). That feeling of a vaguely horrified complicity is something I experienced in a different form when I went to see Anton Kannemeyer’s A Dreadul Thing Is About to Occur at Michael Stevenson.
It’s not the content. I grew up on Bitterkomix, in the age of South Park, where sacredness and cultural preciousness are viable targets. I can live with images of anal probes and caricatured blacks. The more graphic, the better the satire.
22 April 2010 - 29 May 2010
Listings(s)
'Works on Paper'
Anton Kannemeyer at Stevenson in JohannesburgAnton Kannemeyer's latest solo offering remixes the colonial imagery of Herge's Tintin, amongst some home-grown motifs. True to form, Kannemeyer delivers on the black penises and racial transgressions. But in addition to this standard fare, the show features some rarities by Joe Dog (the artist's alter-ego) including original ink drawings for The Big Bad Bitterkomix Handbook covers and posters from Bitterkomix Volumes I and III.
12 November 2009 - 15 December 2009
'A Dreadful Thing is About To Occur'
Anton Kannemeyer at Stevenson in Cape TownIn his second solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, Anton Kannemeyer takes on the polemics of race to explore an array of fears, misconceptions and stereotypes that polarize the debate around race in South Africa on a daily basis. Using a frank humor that belies a dense criticality, Kannemeyer takes as the starting point for many of his images the gag cartoons from The New Yorker, amongst other sources. In so doing he strategically overlays different socio-political contexts, echoed in his use of a visual language which references Hergé's Tintin - the archetypal white settler in Africa.
22 April 2010 - 29 May 2010
Bitterkomix showcased on 'The Graphic Unconscious', Philagrafika 2010
Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes at The Print CenterPhilagrafika 2010 is the first presentation of what will become a recurring event in Philadelphia, celebrating the role of print in contemporary artistic practice.
Involving more than 300 artists at more than 80 venues throughout the city, Philagrafika 2010 will be one of the largest art events in the United States and the world’s most important print-related exposition. Prominent museums and cultural institutions across Philadelphia are participating in Philagrafika 2010, offering regional, national and international audiences the opportunity to see contemporary art that references printmaking in dynamic, unexpected ways and to experience the rich cultural life of the city in the process.
‘The Graphic Unconscious’, is the central exhibition of Philagrafika 2010.
29 January 2010 - 11 April 2010
'Coca-Colonized'
Anton Kannemeyer and Cameron Platter at Brot Kunsthalle'Coca-Colonized' is a selection of work by South-, Central America- and Africa-based artists (both physically and conceptually). It is a response to the ideology that the influence of mass culture on another, what is termed ‘less established’ or ‘developing’ region, implies an absolute relationship between the influencer and the impressionable. 'Coca-Colonized' is an attempt to question this relationship, exploring how mass cultural influence has been absorbed, reinterpreted and at times rejuvenated, inverting this implied power relationship. What results is a new ‘third language’ that is beyond dual identity and more than a straightforward combination of mass culture and local culture—rather, one that is a powerful cultural phenomenon in its own right.
The exhibition includes Anton Kannemeyer (South Africa), Peterson Kamwathi Waweru (Kenya), Cameron Platter (South Africa), Baudouin Mouanda (Congo), Maria Jose Arjona (Colombia), Simon Vega (El Salvador), Omar Obdulio Pena Forty (Puerto Rico), Reynier Leyva-Novo (Cuba), and Emilio Chapela Perez (Mexico).
16 September 2010 - 20 November 2010
'Peekaboo'
Wim Botha, Jane Alexander, Anton Kannemeyer, Hasan and Husain Essop, Penny Siopis, Daniel Naude, Lawrence Lemaoana and Nandipha Mntambo at Helsinki Art Museum (Tennis Palace)South Africa has in the past fifteen years developed into a major centre of contemporary art, with several artists in the international limelight. 'Peekaboo' is Finland’s first major review of the artists and themes in contemporary South African art.
The key theme shared by the featured artists is society in a constant state of flux. Apartheid was abolished in 1994, but its scars are still visible. In addition to historical traumas, the artists are concerned with present insecurity, the changed role of religion and the possibilities offered by new kinds of identities. Some works explore personal experiences and others comment brutally or poetically on the surrounding reality, sometimes using humour or satire. The history of European art and modern life in South Africa converge in unexpected ways.
'Peekaboo' is produced and curated by the Helsinki Art Museum, and includes twenty South African artists. In addition to the artists, the South African partners in this venture are the Goodman Gallery, the Michael Stevenson Gallery and the Brodie/Stevenson Gallery.
20 August 2010 - 16 January 2011
'After the Barbarians'
Anton Kannemeyer at Jack Shainman GalleryIt is no wonder that Kannemeyer’s art makes viewers uncomfortable about definitions of black and white, European and African. He paints post-colonial Africans as the hell-bent illegitimate children of violent historical rape, both victims and perpetrators. He implicitly asks how the clear-cut categories and neat names expressed by political correctness could accurately describe the violent mess that has spawned the likes of Apartheid, Idi Amin, and the genocide in Rwanda. On the other side, he confronts the affluent South African suburbia where Western luxuries are lined with apocalyptic fear and xenophobia.
Savage indignation about bigotry and the abuse of power has always been at the core of Kannemeyer’s work, but the point of departure was not that of the concerned citizen or philanthropist. His scathing and often self-effacing art comes from an ambiguous and darkly personal place. It does not have any pretense to a God’s-eye view, but frequently places the artist within his own twisted sociopolitical landscape.
Kannemeyer has, however, broadened his satirical scope significantly in recent years. After meticulously drawing the anatomy of white fear and loathing, he started wrestling with the social issues plaguing his own country and the continent as a whole. His latest work urges one to look again at imperialism and the racial and cultural identity that has become synonymous with post-apartheid South Africa.
13 October 2011 - 12 November 2011
Summer 2010/11
Anton Kannemeyer, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Hylton Nel, Viviane Sassen and Claudette Schreuders at Stevenson in Cape TownAnton Kannemeyer, following his successful exhibition with the gallery in May this year and the publication of his much-debated Pappa in Afrika book, will show the final works in his Alphabet of Democracy series. The artist has been working on this series for the past five years, chronicling the absurdities of life in the democratic South Africa; his imagery subverts the narrative, history and myth of the ‘rainbow nation’ with acute humour and critique. This exhibition will be accompanied by a book, published by Jacana, bringing together the approximately 70 images in the series.
Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen (Amsterdam, 1972) will exhibit at the gallery for the first time. Sassen grew up in East Africa and has been taking photographs on the continent since her first return visit in 2002. Her imagery is infused with memories of her youth, from the beauty of the landscape and the children with whom she used to play to the poverty of the shanty towns and her doctor-father's terminally ill patients. She will show new work alongside some images from her Flamboya and Ultra Violet series, for which she won the Dutch art prize, the Prix de Rome, in 2007. According to the judges, ‘Sassen knows how to go beyond the confines of her subject. The photographs do not just portray death, loss and urban life in Africa. They show genuine humanity, cultural clichés, Sassen's personal life story and aesthetics.’
Claudette Schreuders will show five new sculptures, prior to a solo exhibition in April 2011 at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. This is the first time since 2004 that she has exhibited a significant group of sculptures in South Africa. The new series is entitled Close, close, taken from a poem by Elisabeth Bishop which describes a sleeping couple and reflects on the ‘closeness’ being both comforting and stifling:
Close, close all night
the lovers keep
They turn together,
in their sleep …
Schreuders’ previous series of sculptures, 'The Fall', dealt with the trajectory of a couple’s relationship. 'Close, close' picks up the story after the arrival of children. Where her work till now has consisted mostly of single figures, in this group the individual figure largely disappears, with each of the sculptures featuring two or more figures carved from a single block of wood. On show will also be a series of drawings inspired by historical and contemporary sculptures that grapple with the challenges of incorporating more than one figure into a single sculpture.
The winner of the 2010 Tollman Award for Visual Art, Serge Alain Nitegeka, will show meditations on form based on his experience of Johannesburg. Nitegeka writes:
What occupies my mind is the question of how to reduce or even organise the 'surplus' and clutter of urban shapes to simple lines and forms that allow focus and appreciation. These works arose out of a curiosity about the everyday shapes, forms and structures of a city, and human access and relations to them ... In a contemplative process of looking and re-looking, I create forms that appear as abstracted versions of original shapes. During this process, the familiarity of form is lost; their individuality disappears and dissolves into simple abstraction.
In anticipation of Hylton Nel’s 70th birthday in 2011, the gallery will exhibit recent works by the artist for the first time in five years. Nel continues to develop his distinctive style of work, rich in references to the decorative arts, literary and art-historical sources, and South African life. His plates, bowls, vases, plaques and figurative pieces are idiosyncratically decorated with witty and sometimes poignant line drawings and script. His imagery ranges from penises to madonnas, cats to angels, and his quotes are drawn from poetry and the daily press as well as his observations of the world around him. The occasion will also be celebrated by a new book on Nel’s work by Michael Stevenson, published by Jacana.
02 December 2010 - 15 January 2011
