MOSHEKWA LANGA,
STEVENSON GALLERY, CAPE TOWN
14 April – 28 May 2016
Zebediela, 2015.
About:
STEVENSON is pleased to announce Moshekwa Langa’s upcoming exhibition at our Cape Town gallery in April, followed by a small survey of his work at Frieze New York in May. This is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery, and will comprise new drawings, paintings and installation.
Born in South Africa and based in Amsterdam, Langa’s work since the mid-1990s has interrogated land and public and personal politics through the mapping of territory and cultural environments, on occasion using actual maps as a basis. The upcoming exhibition continues Langa’s narration of his life through abstract, figurative and text-based imagery, often in the form of ‘word towers’ charting the relationships, associations and intimacies with places and people that constitute his journeys in the world.
Matatiele, 2014/2015.
In the catalogue to Langa’s 2005 exhibition at MAXXI in Rome, Nicola Brandt writes:
Langa’s abstract works counter the world of visual phenomena or objective representation. Instead, there is a materialization of feeling and emotion through colour, texture and whimsical forms. These works seek no particular values, intellectual ideas or promise of meaning. They fall beyond utility and knowledge, disregarding the ballast of social and political ideas. Langa succeeds in transforming inert material into a vehicle for abstract feelings.
Mekgotheng, 2015.
At Frieze New York (5-8 May 2016), Stevenson will present selected works from Langa’s oeuvre (booth D11). The presentation will span nearly two decades, including drawings ranging from 2003 to 2016.
In July, Langa will organise, with Joost Bosland, a group show entitled The Quiet Violence of Dreams, exploring K Sello Duiker’s 2001 novel of the same title and its resonance with visual artists working then and now. The show will take place across Stevenson’s Cape Town and Johannesburg galleries.
For John, 2009.
Langa was born in Bakenberg in 1975 and studied at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 1997-8. Rising to international prominence in the late 1990s, he was an active participant in what is now considered the golden age of biennales, including those of Johannesburg (1997), Istanbul (1997), Havana (1997), São Paulo (1998 and 2010), Gwangju (2000), Venice (2003 and 2009), and Lyon (2011). Langa has held solo exhibitions at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (1999), the Renaissance Society in Chicago (1999), the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome (2005), Kunsthalle Bern (2011), Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois (2013), and the IFA Galleries in Stuttgart and Berlin (2014); and was included on the touring exhibitions The Short Century (2001-2) and Africa Remix (2004-7), among others.
