Ocula Conversation Sunjung Kim’s Real DMZ Project Interrogates the North and South Korea Divide Ongoing since 2012, the Real DMZ Project interrogates the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea through annual, research-based exhibitions that bring together the works of Korean and international artists. Sunjung Kim, the independent curator behind the project, conceived the idea of exploring the DMZ while curating Japanese artist...
Ocula Report Frieze Week Lowdown: London Shows to See 20 Sep 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula London's galleries and museums are gearing up for a lively October, with Frieze London and Frieze Masters running between 3 and 6 October 2019 at Regent's Park, along with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, taking place across the same dates at Somerset House; and the tenth anniversary of the Sunday Art Fair, showcasing new and emerging artists...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
William Kentridge is a South African artist and draughtsman of Jewish and Lithuanian descent who presents the struggles and emotions of post-Apartheid South Africa through a multitude of forms, notably his animated films of charcoal drawings, as well as sculpture, tapestry, opera, and various other media. Through the 1970s, Kentridge studied politics and African studies, as well as fine arts in Johannesburg, and was also heavily involved in theatre. This laid a solid foundation for the structure of his work, informing the dramatic and rather jarring subject and narrative, and also influencing the means of approach and production.
There is an emphasis on process in his work. Kentridge points out that the viewer can pick up on the labour that has gone into his creative work, which adds a sense of value and honesty to the piece, as they can 'sympathise' with an object or artwork. Kentridge’s painstaking approach to making his films is a visceral part of the work, as the series of drawings used are put on display alongside the film. This ‘process’ helps to give grounding and added weight to his expressionist style, which often deals with tragedy and graphic, uncomfortable subject matter. An example of this is History of the Main Complaint (1996), which shows a figure being violently beaten and the resulting injuries in an x-ray.
As a member of the South African Resistance Art movement of the 1980s, Kentridge’s work was virtually unknown outside his country, but he has since established an international reputation, exhibiting his drawings and films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2008), and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004). He has also taken part in the Sydney Biennale on two occasions, 1996 and 2008, and also the documenta, in 1997 and 2002.
William Kentridge resides and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Ocula Report Art Basel Lowdown: Shows to See 6 Jun 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula To coincide with Art Basel 2019, which opens to the public from 13 to 16 June, galleries and institutions across the city are presenting a range of stellar exhibitions. From Rebecca Horn at Museum Tinguely to Geumhyung Jeong at Kunsthalle Basel, here is a selection of what to see.William Kentridge, Dead Remus (2014–2016). Charcoal on found ledger...
Ocula Report Armory Week Lowdown: Shows to See 2 Mar 2019 : Sharmistha Ray for Ocula The Armory Show opens to the public on 7 March (running to 10 March 2019)—just about a week after the fair relocated a portion of its 194 exhibitors due to structural issues found in Pier 92, forcing its sister fair Volta to cancel its 2019 show so that Armory could occupy its Pier 90 venue. Despite the upheaval, New York's art week is going...
Ocula Conversation William Kentridge Artist For over 20 years, the legacies of colonialism have been recurring themes in William Kentridge's work. In 2018, he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Pretoria in South Africa in recognition of a practice that has consistently charted 'a universal history of war and revolution, evoking the complexities and tensions of...
Ocula Report Golden Jubilee: Art Brussels 27 Apr 2018 : Denis Maksimov for Ocula At the entrance of the fiftieth anniversary edition of Art Brussels (19–22 April 2018), Iván Navarro's Sediments (2017) at Galerie Templon's booth offered an appropriate 'welcome' into the bottomless world of an art fair—a world map rendered in lights that infinitely stretch into a void by way of an illusion created with mirrors. At La...
Related Press THAT WHICH WE DO NOT REMEMBER WILLIAM KENTRIDGE ArtAsiaPacific : 1 March 2019 As I looked through William Kentridge's That Which We Do Not Remember at Sydney's Art Gallery of New South Wales, led by the multimedia artist himself, it became increasingly apparent to me that Kentridge, often described as a distinctive and powerful voice in the global contemporary art realm, is both erudite and generous with his ideas.
Related Press William Kentridge’s Real and Metaphorical Cages Illuminate a Protest on Deportation Hyperallergic : 16 August 2018 MILWAUKEE—The current William Kentridge exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, More Sweetly Play the Dance, is an immersive 2015 installation: a 14-minute video loop projected on a series of eight screens, 130 feet long in total. The screens unfold like an accordion book, not quite aligning, leaving small gaps that create page breaks in the...
Related Press William Kentridge and the forgotten victims of Africa’s Great War Financial Times : 6 July 2018 Does art have the power to affect people’s view of war and politics? In the years during and following the first world war, art did its best to reflect the desolation and sense of waste prompted by the monstrous number of lives lost between 1914 and 1918. Art and literature portrayed a world that had fallen apart and lost its moorings to meaning:...
Related Press Artists Launch Global Art Project to Confront the Rise of Right-Wing Populism Art Forum : 27 February 2017 More than two hundred artists, musicians, writers, and arts professionals from forty countries have pledged to take part in Hands Off Our Revolution, a global art project that will organize a series of exhibitions and other programming to confront the rise of right-wing populism around the world.
