Current Review(s)
Starless and Bible Black: Palliative Models of a Perfect Tense
Chad Rossouw at BrundynThe cavernous central space of Brundyn+, large enough to hold a small historical manufactory, provides an industrial stage for ‘The Planet’s Wake’, comprising an extraordinary variety of different works by the genius bricoleur Chad Rossouw. Crafted out of many different quasi-ancient and quasi-futuristic materials, these are thought-things that wittily take up a range of inter-texts: part nostalgic reimaginings of popular culture, part critical investigations into the meanings of making and looking at art.
24 July 2014 - 30 August 2014
A History of Failure
Chad Rossouw at BrundynRemember the furore when the de la Rey number reemerged a couple of years ago? At the time, the Department of Arts and Culture acknowledged the composer’s right to free speech, warning however of the tune’s subversive potential. Interesting: that line between subversion and critical potential. And it is the de la Ray which has once again surfaced as a vehicle of critique – a float, as it were, upon which to suspend what Chad Rossouw’s exhibition calls ‘A History of Failure’.
The young Rossouw (writer, lecturer and artist – the order given by his exhibition pamphlet) is a recent graduate of Michaelis, UCT, and the exhibition was submitted in part towards his Masters thesis there. As Rossouw’s first solo show with the Brundyn + Gonsalves gallery, there is a certain irony to his chosen title, allowing little room for expectation or the possibility of underachievement. Indeed it is the imminence of an Icarus landing which greets the viewer in the artist’s The Union of South Africa (2011).
20 March 2012 - 02 May 2012
Listings(s)
'A Tour of the Ruins of Table View'
Chad Rossouw at BrundynBRUNDYN+ is pleased to present Brundyn Talks, a series of monthly talks, which will be held at the gallery’s video room. The talks are a platform for the public to engage with interdisciplinary discourse presented by artists, curators, academics, literary scholars, musicians and filmmakers to name but a few.
The first talk will be held by Chad Rossouw, gallery artist and Ruth Prowse lecturer. It will be a contemplation of the anti-Sublime, the South Easter in Cape Town, ruins as allegory, the disappointed Romantic, and bleakness as an aesthetic strategy in the work of photographers like Pieter Hugo, Vincent Bezuidenhout and Cameron Platter's strange recent foray into the photographic medium.
Entrance to the talks is free; however, please RSVP to info@brundyngonsalves.com to book, as seats are limited.
20 February 2014 - 20 February 2014
The Planet's Wake
Chad Rossouw at BrundynThe Planet’s Wake takes its cue from many sources. It is distinctively inspired by science fiction and fantasy narratives like the Terminator franchise and GeorgeR.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, but also looks to medieval manuscripts and weapons, translations and mistranslations, apocalypse, classical Rome and apocryphal stories. Linking these sources are three underlying concerns: a worry about truth, authenticity, irony and fakery; the weight of history, both personal and South African; and a fascination with ruins and fragments.
24 July 2014 - 30 August 2014
'A History of Failure'
Chad Rossouw at BrundynTo study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
– Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (1943)
'A History of Failure' uses South Africa’s past to examine both the complex nature of history and of South African identity. Using a variety of media, including lithographs, sculpture and found objects, Rossouw shows moments of melancholy, bathos and bombastic failure against the relentless march of historical time. Two main ideas connect the various artworks in 'A History of Failure'. The first is that historical progress is merely an illusion. The second proposes an inherent failing in projects, monuments or nations that are dependent on the illusion of history.
The Union of South Africa, for example, presents a railway (a symbol of progress and imperial ownership of land) spiraling to the ceiling with a model train teetering on the brink of disaster. Other works, such as The De La Rey, invent fictional histories, in this case the development and destruction of a South African Zeppelin in the 1930s. Here history is a tale told from mutable evidence.
20 March 2012 - 02 May 2012
