Listing(s)

'After the Barbarians'

Anton Kannemeyer at Jack Shainman Gallery

It 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

'Close, Close'

Claudette Schreuders at Jack Shainman Gallery

'Close, Close' is a continuation of a narrative that began with 'The Fall', an earlier group of work exploring the trajectory of a couple’s relationship using biblical imagery. 'Close, Close' continues the couple’s story by delving into the complexities of family life. Where Schreuders’ work previously consisted mostly of single figures, these sculptures predominantly include two or more figures carved from a single block of wood. In Eclipse a mother holds up her baby so that he can see and be seen, obscuring herself from the viewer. In One a father considers with both love and detachment an infant grasping his legs. The vein connecting these works is the idea of the individual being threatened by the very thing he or she desires. For Schreuders, the craving for children and motherhood holds many of these contradictions.  Schreuders calls upon family photographs and literature as source material, exploring her personal experience as a white descendent of colonial settlers in apartheid-era South Africa. While many of the works in 'Close, Close' plumb the depths of individual emotion, Schreuders also approaches the realities of South African racial relationships and the way they permeate family life, as in Abba, where a black woman carries a white baby on her back.

17 March 2011 - 16 April 2011