
Vince is not an artist of preconceived concepts and sketchbooks full of experiments. He begins a work when he feels the need for it and lets it form associatively or intuitively.
Vince is not an artist of preconceived concepts and sketchbooks full of experiments. He begins a work when he feels the need for it and lets it form associatively or intuitively.
Heidi Sincuba has not abandoned her original commitment; she has added a dimension to it. This is evident in the works on paper she is showing at Gallery 23 in Amsterdam.
I had recently visited a number of exhibitions which had given me fresh ideas about abstraction: Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965 (Munich, 2016) and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 (London, 2017), being two stand out examples. I was especially interested in a group of artists associated with ‘Black abstraction’ from the second half 20th century, most of whose work I was familiar with but had not always had the context for. Then I re-read James Baldwin’s short story ’Sonny’s Blues’. And now I stood before Rembrandt’s painting Oopjen Coppit. My intuition told me they were connected. I began to write, the outcome of which is an essay about Oopjen, Black Aesthetics, and abstraction.
Matloga’s work is political, personal and universal at the same time. Growing up in a deeply troubled, racist society does leave its traces. These are counterbalanced by family life, love, friendship and the joy of living.