Forthcoming exhibitions at David Krut Projects
Deborah Bell's Alchemy
Deborah Bell's work is fundamentally informed by a personal search for the "Self" and she often draws on spiritual imagery from a wide range of sources. Multi-layered references and connection to ancient sources and memories is linked to her spiritual beliefs and how she defines herself as an artist in Africa. This continuity of form and content within Bell's opus allows the possible meanings within her work to reach beyond the personal search of the artist herself.
Companion to Deborah Bell's Alchemy is a publication of the same name, which looks at the last 10 years of Bell's collaborative printmaking. It highlights the start of her printmaking career alongside William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins and expands on her recent visits to Jack Shirreff (107 Workshop), Phil Sanders (Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop) and regular projects at DKW and the new location at Art on Main with Jillian Ross, Mlungisi Kongisa and Niall Bingham.
David Krut Publishing. A re-print of TAXI-10 has recently become available again.
William Kentridge: Recent Linocuts
Showing from 9 May to 30 July, 2011, the exhibition brings together recent examples of a medium for which William Kentridge is lesser known. Despite the scarcity of linocuts in Kentridge's oeuvre, one of the first prints he made in 1976 after finishing high school was a linocut: an image of his grandfather in a deck chair wearing a three-piece suit while on holiday in Muizenberg, Cape Town. Although the extent of the facilities available to Kentridge at the time was limited to "lino, cartridge paper and the back of a spoon", he has cited the image as a source (at least of outfit) for his famous ever-pinstripe-suited character, Soho Eckstein.
Twenty-odd years later, Kentridge has briefly returned to the linocut and, coincidentally, to Soho Eckstein. The Ganeshian nature of Kentridge's practice allows any selection of work to always contain traces of projects past or yet to come, as well as a particular sensitivity to medium. The linocuts included in this exhibition were all created during the course of 2010 and reference Kentridge's production of The Nose in March 2010; his recent exhibition in the Egyptian Collection wing of the Louvre; work towards The Refusal of Time, a collaborative work set for realisation at Documenta 13; the Firewalker sculpture of 2009; and, most significantly, the return of Soho Eckstein in a new animated film.
Although the linocut is marginalised in Europe and America, it has become a rich source of expression for South Africans - originally because of it accessibility and, continuing into the future, because of its established tradition. It is significant that Kentridge, who has played such a major role in the development of the South African arts culture, has returned to the medium in this collection of work. The concurrent reintroduction of the critical character of Soho Eckstein into Kentridge's oeuvre, with links to major projects of recent years, goes further in establishing Kentridge's importance as the great cultural polymath of our time.
David Krut Projects, Cape Town, is at the Montebello Design Centre, 31 Newlands Avenue, Newlands, Cape Town. Tel: +27 (0)21 685 0676 or alastair@davidkrut.com
Gallery and Bookstore hours are: Tuesday to Friday 9am to 5pm. Saturday: 10am to 2pm.
