In Back of the Moon, the artist presents large-scale, multi-panel works, extending his exploration of the collage technique both on and with the canvas. Following two years studying painting at Amsterdam’s De Ateliers, the artist attributes his gravitation towards a mixed-media approach to an affection for line drawing and materials with a connection to South Africa’s political past, as well as the conceptual undercurrent provided by rupturing, layering and forming hybridities.

The artist writes:

I thought about what it means to offer my practice from a social and aesthetic context and point of view. I made the conscious decision to continue making the interiors using a monochromatic palette, partially due to the fact that this use of colour makes the figures difficult to place in time – my characters appear in scenes from an alternative, personal existence.

With all figurative painting, the most important question asked is, who are the people in the painting? In my collage paintings, the figures refuse to solidify into simply drawn or painted material; there is a living presence there on the canvas that cannot be looked away from.

The scenes in this exhibition take place in bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, stoeps and studies, with figures depicted in ambiguous confrontations and embraces, interspersed with solitary moments. Matloga employs contradictory arrangements of posture and expression, offering a kaleidoscope of interiors and interiorities that question common understandings of social relations. The artist continues:

Although the scenes are socially confirmed, living with the work in studio made me realise that I’m creating situations that I know are not for me to understand, meaning I’m not able to decipher the expressions of these souls even though I highly connect with and to them.

The questions that arise about the people in the paintings are part and parcel of the concept. At the centre is an allegory that speaks to the importance of carrying on with life, living and existing in the midst of all the socio-politics.

In a review of the artist’s 2019 solo exhibition at the Fries Museum, Neo to Love, Machteld Leij observed, ‘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.’ In Back of the Moon, the artist continues his observations on tenderness and trauma, stating:

I decided to name this exhibition Back of the Moon not because I’m illustrating this beautiful phenomenon but more because the creative process of these artworks happened at night in the light of the moon, from my studio in Limpopo.

One evening I watched The Suit which is about the moment when domestic happiness turns into domestic violence. Similar stories happen within my surroundings. It strengthened my belief of being against jealousy, harassment and marital strife, but perhaps the violence lies translated in the collage technique. Even though there’s no set formula in studio, by starting with collage, I’m simultaneously distorting and recreating the integrity of the face.

For me the collage element makes the coherence of the canvas even more difficult to grasp. It would be illogical of me to ignore the fact that portraying everyday black life is somewhat of a political act but I will not take on the title of an activist or politically explicit artist, based on my simple observation that people do not stop being moral agents.

Back of the Moon is Neo Matloga’s first solo exhibition with Stevenson Johannesburg – For any inquiries and information about the works in this exhibition please contact: info@stevenson.info

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“For a transitory enchanted moment, man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Through this quote, author John Green noted how the narrator in the famous American novel; The Great Gatsby points us towards the idea of wonder —more appropriately humanity’s capacity for wonder. It’s safe to say that in this age very few things are proportionate with humanity’s capacity for wonder but even more so, very few things are proportionate with our capacity to feel. 

I am not suggesting that our capacity to feel has diminished or shrunk, what I am suggesting is that fewer and fewer things have the ability to move us emotionally. As the rate at which we are being stimulated, entertained, challenged, provoked etc. continues to increase so the rate of affect or affectivity declines. Here we are building on the idea of affect as understood by French philosophers of the last century —affect as the sense of what is felt or as the mental activity required to make sense of the world.

I’m interested in these moments of affectivity that are experienced through a glimpse into someone else’s world; moments that occur through literature, music or art, where one finds oneself understanding or at least wanting to understand the experiences of someone else. Bilongue (an exhibition staged at Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town) is Barthélémy Toguo’s attempt at understanding the experiences of others, where the artist is allowing himself to struggle with these experiences that are too complex to synthesise. The poverty of language would have us identify this as empathy however I think we should perhaps not be so quick to settle for this type of language. 

Toguo’s exhibition is created to pay homage to the experiences of the residents of a settlement in Douala, Cameroon; Bilongue. These are people who are largely facing difficult living conditions. The exhibition brings us face to face with portraits of residents of Bilongue and we are confronted with thoughts, feelings, pleasures and displeasures. Drawings on paper are presented together with wood carvings, where lines are chiselled onto the Zingana wood from the Zingana tree of West Africa ( also known as Microberlinia Brazzavillensis). The lines form contours of the distinct features of each of Toguo’s subjects. We see the artist’s hand through his carved marks on the wood but we also see nature’s marks through the phloem of the tree. The illusion of verticality and deep contouring are heightened by this intersection of natural imprint on the inner bark together with Toguo’s own marks. 

Walking through Togou’s exhibition returns us to possible affectivity. Through a lyrical use of idioms and poetry accompanying tender renderings of various faces, we are brought into a different type of sensibility where we may find a new way of feeling, what I would like to propose we think of as deep feeling. Deep feeling as an embodied and affective type of feeling encountered only through conscious mental labour. In this instance, deep denotes what late American composer and member of Deep Listening Band Pauline Oliveros refers to as complexities, boundaries or edges beyond ordinary or habitual understandings. That which is deep as that which surpasses one’s present understanding or that which has too many unknown parts to grasp easily. By extension, deep feeling surpasses surface-level engagement of understanding another’s experiences. Deep feeling requires effort and calls upon us to dig deeper into our capacity to feel. As we look at the carved wood and the ink depicting the residents of Bilongue, we don’t claim to understand or know their experiences, we are simply pulling ourselves towards our full capacity to feel deeply with (not feel for) another. 

Barthélémy Toguo’s Bilongue brings us right back to that quote from The Great Gatsby—for a transitory enchanted moment we hold out our breath in the presence of these images of the people of Bilongue, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation we do not understand, face to face with something commensurate to our capacity to feel. 

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An abstract woman painted in black sits on top of a red goat. She wears a delicate lace top while on her head are stitched together leather straps that hang down like hair. The work, entitled The Journey (2020) by DRC-born Cape Town-based artist Patrick Bongoy, becomes more interesting when we see that she is depicted with the same hooves as the goat. It was displayed on the wall of Ebony/Curated, a gallery with branches in Franschhoek and Cape Town, during the eighth edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. The work, made with hessian, acrylic and rubber inner tubes, portrays the artist’s signature whimsical world that explores themes of migration, alienation and loss of one’s homeland. Also a fashion designer, Bongoy’s work speaks directly to today’s global state of environmental crisis. “My work speaks in response to the global reality of literal and figurative environmental pollution,” he says. Hard to miss after his startling sculpture of a figure at this year’s inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale of a man made in disused rubber hunched over as if trying to free himself from the confines of a pieces of fabric. The piece, which sold in the range of $6,000 and $10,000, was indicative of a strong presence of socio-political work at the fair, challenging present and past ideas of identity and historical narratives as the African continent jets into a new future.

The eighth edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair returned to its home at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, with a new mission to endow the fair with a stronger African focus. “This is an international art fair where we bring in galleries from Europe and the US but we tried this year to focus more on galleries from the African continent,” said fair director Laura Vicenti. 

Out of the fair’s 107 exhibitors this year, 49 galleries were from the African continent and 58 were international, underlining a greater emphasis on the local. In previous years European blue-chip galleries such as Perrotin and Galerie Templon participated. Such names were replaced this year with new galleries from North Africa and the Middle East, including Lawrie Shabibi from Dubai, Galerie Veronique Rieffel from Ivory Coast and Tunisian Yosr Ben Ammar Gallery and AGORGI, among others. In addition, leading museums and institutions from around the world were present, including A4 Arts Foundation, ANO Institute of Contemporary Arts, FOLIO by Alserkal Arts Foundation, Fondazione Merz, Friends der Pinakothek der Moderne, Iziko South African National Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, The Norval Foundation, Palais de Lomé, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Tate Modern African Acquisitions Committee, WEDGE Curatorial Projects, Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation and Zeitz MOCAA.

Yet the challenging socio-economic landscape did provide cause for concern for many participants as well as the fair’s management. How does one host a contemporary art fair in a country where the local currency continues to plunge? 

“The economic landscape of South Africa is challenging,” said Vicenti. “Local collectors are very supportive but it is true that they are facing an economic crisis in South Africa so I tried to balance the situation by having international collectors from all over the world. The number of international collectors increased this year. In comparison to last year there is no comparison. But I am trying hard to have more collectors from Africa.” 

Local dealers were divided, however, on whether the buying power was coming from South Africa or abroad. “Of course we are happy when people from elsewhere come to South Africa to buy art—but the most exciting thing about this year’s Cape Town Art Fair was that the vast majority of our sales were to South Africans,” said Joost Bosland, a director at Stevenson. “It is amazing to see local support for our artists grow year on year.”

South African powerhouse galleries Stevenson, Blank Projects, SMAC Gallery and Goodman Gallery all reported swift sales on the first day of the fair. At the booth of Stevenson was an all-star group showing of emerging and established artists from the continent, including Meleko Mokgosi, Robin Rhode, Zanele Muholi, Neo Matloga and Paulo Nazareth and Simphiwe Ndzube. The gallery reported swift sales in the range of $2,000 and $75,000 and the works, like that of Bongoy’s, once again married the otherworldly and magical realm of dreams with the references to the often harsh reality of the present. 

Several of the fair’s biggest sales took place at Goodman Gallery’s booth, which confirmed approximately 25 sales in total on the opening day ranging from $2,000 to $500,000. The booth showed a line-up of some of their biggest names, including Ghada Amer, Yinka Shonibare…“We had a great diversity in terms of the spend and also the collectors that acquired the works,” said the gallery’s Anthony Dawson. “This is thanks hugely to Fiera Milano, the organizers of the fair who have cultivated a great program and collector base that is not only diversifying audiences to contemporary African art but bringing new brand new collectors into the country.”

“Cape Town is a stronghold for a lot of German citizens who have holiday homes here and they often come to the fair,” continued Dawson. “In addition, through the Italian organizers many Italian collectors were also in attendance but there seems to be strong focus of people from Western Europe coming more and more to Cape Town. We also had collectors from Angola and Nigeria as well. Overall, I’d say the majority of collectors were European.”

Taking place concurrently were two auctions for contemporary and modern art in Cape Town: The Aspire x Piasa Auction, which took place on 14 February and Strauss & Co’s Contemporary Art sale, which took place the day after. The former told of the first time a South African auction house had teamed up with a European equivalent to host a sale of African art on the continent. “Both auction houses made a big effort to bring French collectors to Cape Town which also added to a new audience in the city at the fair,” added Dawson. “With Piasa’s francophone influence we also so collectors arrive from West Africa that the South African audience has never been exposed to.”

The fair was also the place to forge long-term business relationships. First-time participant Galerie Veronique Rieffel from Cote d’Ivoire who showed a series of haunting works by Swiss-French photographer Manuel Braun of an Ivorian dancer in Egypt said she sold works largely to European collectors passing through Cape Town in the range of €3,500 and €6,000. “I forged excellent relationship with local collectors which deserve to be deepened,” said Rieffel. “I have formed a very beautiful partnership with a gallery in Cape Town, South gallery, and we have agreed to continue to show Braun’s work with them in situ.”

The recent edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair testifies that a buoyant market for African contemporary art in South Africa can be achieved even during the most economically challenging of times—but through a concerted effort of local and international collectors, galleries and artists. 

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“Local cultural institutions have adopted the month of February as the visual arts month, transforming Cape Town into a cultural hub”

The 8th edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) returns to the Cape Town Convention centre between 14th – 16th February.  As the largest contemporary art fair on the African continent, the ICTAF coalesces 107 exhibitors and amasses over 16 000 visitors. 

The fair is accompanied by a curated talks programme which brings together leading experts on a range of topics. Curator of the talks programme, Tumelo Mosaka elaborates, ‘The Talks program is very special for me as it is the space where dialogue about issues important in the art world can be engaged by various experts from within and outside the country. It offers an opportunity to introduce the public to some of the issues while also reflecting on others that might have been topical.’ He adds, ‘I’ve always approached the talks as a discursive platform aimed at broader dialogue about the state the arts field. For this year, we will explore arts philanthropy in Africa especially in light of all the new museums cropping up in Africa. Also the question of the role of museums has become a topical issue given issues around reparation and repatriation. Of course hearing from artists is always a treat, getting a glimpse into artists process as well as exploring the challenges of non-profit sector. So we have a lot to discuss that is important.’

For the first time this year, the fair will include a film programme; ART.DOC. Staged at Cape Town’s oldest cinema, The Labia Theatre, ART.DOC will showcase a selection of films including; Billy Monk – Shot in the dark (directed by Craig Cameron-Mackintosh), Sue Williamson, It’s a pleasure to meet you (directed by Sue Williamson) and Imagining Simon Stone (directed by Michaela Limberis). 

Running concurrently with the fair is a series of exciting exhibitions across the city; Materiality (group show) and This song is for… (Gabrielle Goliath) at the Iziko South African National Gallery, without a clear discernible image: Kevin Beasley at A4 Arts Foundation, stukkinne stories and The Royal House of Allure at blank projects, Carrie Mae Weems II Over Time at the Goodman Gallery as well as a Blue is the warmest colour at Bkhz studios’ pop-up exhibition space. 

As with many fairs across the world, the Cape Town Art Fair’s organising logic is centred around commercial interests; presenting an opportunity for established and emerging artists to attract new audiences and gain access to markets. Over and above this, it has the potential to initiate new and interesting conversations or to bring forth ideas and discourse into the general consciousness. A key example of this is the (re)emergence, contemplations and complications of notions of modernity and modernism(s). As part of its presentation, Stevenson Gallery will present Ernst Mancoba’s ink and watercolour work; Drawing. This inclusion of Mancoba feels very pertinent and salient because of course, Mancoba’s practice is instructive in explorations of modernity. Stevenson will also present Mawande Ka Zenzile, pre-empting his upcoming solo; Udludlilali, which will open on the 12th of March. 

Another artist to look out for is Francois-Xavier Gbré (France), who is represented by Cecile Fakhoury Gallery. Gbré’s work is an exploration and revisitation of histories through the landscape where the past is understood as “foreign and unfinished”. Gbré is one of ten artists selected as part of the Tomorrows/Today special segment alongside; Danica Lundy (Canada), Amanda Mushate (Zimbabwe), Andy Robert (Haiti), Fathi Hassan (Egypt), Ernesto Shikhani (Mozambique), Nnenna Okore (Australia), Gregory Olympio (Togo), Bonolo Kavula (South Africa) and Isabelle Grobler (South Africa).  Tomorrows/Today is a curated segment of the fair, which acknowledges emerging artists —those who have previously gone unrecognised and those who are at the early stages of their careers. This year, it is curated by Nkule Mabaso (Curator, Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town) and Luigi Fassi (Artistic Director, MAN-Contemporary Art Museum, Nuoro, Italy).

Thandiwe Msebenzi is also exhibiting with SMITH. Msebenzi explains the concept behind her work; “Egwaveni is a game I played as a child with my friends, we would sing “egwaveni” and touch or gesture towards our vagina, which we referred to as the “gwava”. This is a game we played freely and openly on the streets. It became interesting when we played it around men, it intimidated them and in turn there was a strength we gained in that as young girls. The work is part of a bigger body of work that looks at the intersectonality of gender binaries, told through memories, experiences, and childhood games.”

Once again the city will vibrate and reverberate with art and art-related events during the long fair weekend.

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Standing in close proximity to the walls of the gallery, one is filled with a sense of engulfing disorientation at the layers upon layers of faces before you— persistent in their melancholy and towering in their multiplicity. The eye struggles to settle on a specific point and rather hovers about the surface of the oceans of people. Marks on paper draw out constellations of ordered and disordered faces tessellated upon each other to create a disconnected gathering. The accumulation of these faces encapsulates motion,  crisis, tragedy, ruination and potential flight.

Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg is currently presenting a solo exhibition by Mozambican artist Nelly Guambe. The exhibition (closing 24 January 2020) brings together a series of drawings and installation under the title; Caras (Faces in Portuguese). The configuration of faces on paper present tightly and neatly packed marks next to and on top of each other and the resulting whole is a chaotic dispersion of people across space.

The image of the ocean, its fullness and force, is evident and can be felt in these works— they are highly dense and potent. On one level, they allude to images seen in the aftermath of the catastrophic Cyclone Idai which occurred earlier this year, leaving Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi devastated. They also represent many different faces forming part of a crowd —a continuous over-pouring of faces that seem to float in space, uprooted, fragile and yet remaining resilient—each with their own agency. Caras does not tell us what to do with these images and our impulse for heroism is left unsatisfied. We cannot merely look at the exhibition and feel a sense of resolution and closure toward (and about) the cyclone disaster but rather we are left with space to simply feel. We see the faces, we see the sadness and all we can do is feel deeply.

Gestures of irregular and non-hierarchical repetition simultaneously obscure and intensify. They obscure to the extent that we cannot know who the faces belong to exactly and they intensify because of the persistence of idiosyncratic emotion that weirdly dismantles the separation between us and them. There is a sense of depth and thoughtfulness. 

The strength of the show lies in how Guambe engages the notion of the multiple; many faces crowd the paper plane and many pieces of paper crowd the wall. This “crowding” is sharpened by the scrupulous rigour of the mark. We are submerged in the multitude, not comparable but not dissimilar to the disorientation experienced during an environmental catastrophe—waves moving through crowds and crowds moving through waves. If Caras moves us toward the contemplation of environmental disasters, one would hope that it also moves us toward the contemplation of ourselves in relation to environmental disasters and in relation to the choices we make and their impact on the environment.

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The ocean is the world, without partition and division, only depth and expanse. Because of its depth, it serves as a burial place. So if you point a camera at a mass of water, you get an opaque representation, of gods and languages and objects and songs, everything thrown in with bodies from the West African coast. The opacity of the sea is therefore its rich, dangerous promise. Some will drown, and some will reach harbour. –

Emmanuel Iduma, The Stranger’s Pose (2018)

Jo Ractliffe writes:

I live in a house on the mountainside, overlooking the sea. Every morning I breathe in the sea’s air. It’s a smell like no other, sometimes intensely humic, at other times bearing just the faintest trace of brine. I draw it in as deeply as I can, as if that breath could gather in all the depth of the ocean. It fills me with a pure momentary contentment and I know I am here with the living, not the dead.

In 2015 I sustained an injury that altered my life and the way I see things. Consequently, my photography has shifted away from the research-based, extended photo essay, which required lengthy and repeated journeys into the landscape. These days I find myself working in spurts, more spontaneously and responsively, and observing the dynamics that emerge when a collection of apparently disparate images, made without a clear or sustained intention on my part, comes together. I find myself less invested in my own desires than in what the photographs appear to want from each other. When selecting and editing images for Everything is Everything (2017), I was curious to see the patterns and repetitions that had developed – independently, it seemed, of my intentions – as well as the tone of the work as a whole – despite the range of visual attitudes, photographic modes and camera equipment used over a 30-year period. Similarly, with this body of work, there have been a number of images that have refused to comply with my attempts to edit them out and repeatedly found their way back into the group. This may sound strange: we don’t usually grant the image its own agency, but I’m beginning to see that photographs do have their own force; they push back at us, and if we pay attention, we can enter into different relations with them.

Most of the photographs on this exhibition were made during the past 45 months; a few extend back as far as 1986. They come from many places: the Southern Cape, up the West Coast, to Angola and across the Atlantic to Mexico. From the mermaid in St Helena Bay to Buffel, the southern elephant seal, who journeyed some 2 100 kilometres from Marion Island to undergo his catastrophic moult on Fish Hoek beach earlier this year, this exhibition begins and ends with the sea.

The exhibition will open on Thursday 16 May from 6 to 8pm.

_____________________________

STEVENSON

Stevenson gallery, has an international exhibition programme with a particular focus on the South Africa region. The gallery opened in 2003, and has spaces in Cape Town and Johannesburg. It is jointly owned by its eleven directors. Stevenson participates in Art Basel, Frieze London, Paris Photo and Art Basel Miami Beach.

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A warmed globe needs new writers to guide us through it; will climate change, like World War I, usher in a new novel?

Stephanie Bernhard

In carrying on Bernhard’s thinking above, one wonders whether a warmed globe will usher in new modes of thinking and new modes of creating. What images, creations and conversations will be generated ? And how will those expand our notions of how we relate to each other as human,  as well as how we relate to other creatures and living organisms ?

Through this exhibition, presented at Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg (30 March – 2 May 2019), Penny Siopis opens up new options through which to explore images that speak to climate change —colour, form and texture construct a powerful sensory experience and open up a space for reflection on climate change. In the weightlessness of the material (glue and ink), the mind is stretched towards new imaginaries and material ways of creating fantasies.

The material process of the paintings is a fluid affair; the glue’s capacity to change its form and colour when it comes into contact with other forces – air, gravity, water, my gestures – imbues it with a presence that holds onto itself as ‘something other’, yet can simultaneously take on the guise of an image.

Penny Siopis

Penny Siopis embraces the figure in these paintings. Still and moving bodies creep into the canvas creating a delicate and disquieting atmosphere —the use of glue and ink simulates a sense of pliability and malleability and brings forth an array of immense emotions.

These material incidents – especially when they evolve into bits of figuration – have the potential to draw together wildly different states of being, real and imagined, dreams, history and myth, or stories from the realms of politics, philosophy, critical theory.

Penny Siopis

This body of work does not present us with definitive meanings or interpretations but rather serves as entry points into multiple readings —among other possibilities, the show can be extrapolated into our readings and understandings of environmental disasters; what is natural, who is affected, who is implicated? Climate change is negotiated in the context of life itself; human and non-human matter, encounters with other creatures, the forces and elements of nature; earth, water, air and fire? Siopis questions how we imagine global warming; its forms and formlessness—do we imagine burning, drowning or absolute alterity?

Old stories are used as a grounding through which to imagine new worlds; the story of Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, for instance, considers the narrative of the island of Mauritius and annotates our dialogues on political ecology. All is connected; history and myth, dreams and reality, politics and philosophy —ideologies converge.

Penny Siopis’ ongoing inquiry reverberates in the oscillating waves of the abstracted paintings, playing on how colour commands attention and produces meaning—piercing blues and blazing reds and oranges of varying forms and intensity pulsate into the hallowed atmosphere while expanding our imagination forward.

→ Warm Water Imaginaries, solo exhibition by Penny Siopis in Johanesburg

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The works in this exhibition were made in response to an invitation to participate in Rising Waters: The Indian Ocean in the Twenty-first Century, a group exhibition at the McMullen Museum, Boston, in 2020. The show proposes to look at climate change and the migration of people, objects and ideas across the Indian Ocean. With Warm Water Imaginaries,Siopis responds to this vast history and complex geological and social present through the creation of imaginary worlds in small and large paintings, as well as object-assemblages and a new film in progress. While alluding to narratives and images that speak to climate change, the works’ open form, associative materiality and vibrant process invite the spectator to project their own imaginings.

Read the article on this exhibition by clicking on the following link:   → A union of form, texture and colour reflects on climate change

_____________________________

STEVENSON

Stevenson gallery, has an international exhibition programme with a particular focus on the South Africa region. The gallery opened in 2003, and has spaces in Cape Town and Johannesburg. It is jointly owned by its eleven directors. Stevenson participates in Art Basel, Frieze London, Paris Photo and Art Basel Miami Beach.

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An increasingly large contingent within Investec Cape Town Art Fair is made up of prominent galleries from around the globe. These galleries represent exciting, established and emerging artists with a presence in museums, biennials, and important private collections around the world. International galleries returning to the Fair are:

• Perrotin (Paris)
• Galleria Minini (Brescia)
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan)
• Galleria Continua (San Gimignano)
• Circle Art Gallery (Nairobi)
• Officine dell’Immagine (Milan)
• Gregor Podnar (Berlin)
• First Floor Gallery (Harare)
• Tyburn Gallery (London)
• October Gallery (London)
• Galleria Giovanni Bonelli (Milan)
• Addis Fine Art (Addis Ababa)
• Afriart Gallery (Kampala)
• ARTCO Gallery (Aachen)
• Caroline Smulders (Paris)
• THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE (Luanda)
• Sulger-Buel Lovell (London)
• Galerie Pascal Janssens (Ghent)
• Art First (London), MOVART (Luanda)
• THIS IS NO FANTASY (Melbourne).

There is also an influx of international galleries participating in Investec Cape Town Art Fair for the first time:

• Templon (Paris)
• MAGNIN-A (Paris)
• LOOM Gallery (Milan)
• Ayyam Gallery (Dubai)
• Retro Africa (Lagos)
• Lia Rumma (Milan)
• LKB/Gallery (Hamburg)
• Omenka Gallery (Lagos)
• Montoro12 Gallery (Rome)
• Eduardo Secci Contemporary (Florence)
• Art Twenty One (Lagos)
• Apalazzo Gallery (Brescia)
• Barbara Paci Galleria d’Arte (Pietrasanta)
• Nil Gallery (Paris)
• Cellar Contemporary (Trento)
• ELA – Espaço Luanda Arte (Luanda)
• NOMAD Gallery (Brussels)
• Sitor Senghor (Paris)
• Louis Simone Guirandou Gallery (Abidjan)
• Matter Gallery (Toronto).

Investec Cape Town Art Fair serves as the hometown fair of local galleries with a significant international presence. ICTAF 2019 will see new presentations by leading South African galleries including Goodman Gallery, Everard Read CIRCA, Stevenson, SMAC Gallery, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Gallery MOMO, SMITH, and Blank Projects. Alongside their presentations at ICTAF these galleries, each of whom are pillars of the art scene in Cape Town and South Africa at-large, will form a captivating programme of exhibition openings and events to coincide with the Fair.

Tomorrows/Today, the section of the Fair which aims to place a spotlight on emerging and under-represented artists, will be curated by Fair Curator Tumelo Mosaka. The artists presented in Tomorrows/Today are positioned to be tomorrow’s leading names in contemporary art. The presentations in the section have continued to be thought-provoking and experimental since its inception at the 2016 edition of the Fair. Tomorrows/Today reiterates the Fair’s support of artists who may otherwise be overlooked by the art market.

The second iteration of the SOLO section, will explore the effects of the digital world on artistic production and our lived realities. Each edition of SOLO aims to present a more in-depth insight into the artistic practices of a varied selection of artists than is commonly found in the commercially-driven art fair setting. The selected artists have varying aesthetics and contexts, are situated in different stages of their careers, and have unique perspectives on each edition’s thematic focus.

Artskop3437 is an official partner of Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF)

See the full exhibitor list here

© Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) 2019

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