GOODMAN-GALLERY JOBURG
Sam Nhlengethwa / Some Final Tributes
11 SEPTEMBER – 04 OCTOBER 2014
Tribute to Henri Matisse, 2014.
About:
Sam Nhlengethwa is intrigued by people and their spaces “Throughout the years, all my pieces have dealt with the movement of people. I enjoy paying homage to people and places through my art”. In the tributes prints, he pays tribute to some of his visual art contemporaries and others who have paved the way for South African art. He salutes and honours Ephraim Ngatane, David Golblatt, Henri Matisse, Romare Bearden, Jean Michel Basquiat, Cecil Skotnes, Helen Sebidi, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Deborah Bell, Dumile Feni, William Kentridge, Judith Mason, Marlene Dumas, Peter Clark, David Koloane, George Pemba, Dumisani Mabaso, Esta Mahlangu, Robert Hodgins and Gerard Sekoto.
Trainstation Waiting Room 1, 2014.
Most of these artists are South African and all of them have secured their place on the local and international art scene. By recreating the works of his contemporaries and role models and then placing them within a represented or imagined gallery space Nhlengethwa provides a new context in which to experience the work of these celebrated artists. The artist’s work has been paired up with contemporary interiors and furniture that emphasise Nhlengethwa’s understanding of the “mental space” of that particular artist, and then pulled together using Nhlengethwa’s own distinctive style.
Tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat, 2014.
Sam Nhlengethwa was born in the mining community of Payneville Springs in 1955 and grew up in Ratanda location in Heidelberg, east of Johannesburg. He completed a two-year Fine Art Diploma at the Rorkes Drift Art Centre in the late 1970s. While he exhibited extensively both locally and abroad during the 1980s and ’90s, Nhlengethwa’s travelling solo showSouth Africa, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in 1993 established him at the vanguard of critical consciousness in South Africa and he went on to win the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1994.
Underground II, 2014.
Tribute to Romare Bearden, 2014.
Courtesy: Goodman Galleries South-Africa.