Whatiftheworld is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by Jan-Henri Booyens titled Tectonic. Booyens (b. 1981) is a fast-rising, young South African painter imbued with a distinctive artistic vision. After his successful debut solo exhibition _ The Matt Sparkle_ at Whatiftheworld in 2008, Marilyn Martin (former director of the SA National Gallery) wrote that his works were “unashamedly modernist in intention and execution”.
The gallery is pleased to announce that it has been selected for VOLTA NY, the American incarnation of the successful young fair founded in Basel in 2005. VOLTA NY was conceived to continue the original mandate to create a tightly-focused, boutique affair that would be a place for discovery and concentrate on current and topical art production.
Whatiftheworld / Gallery presents Paradise Apparatus, a new solo exhibition by Julia Rosa Clark. This show concludes a trilogy that included the acclaimed Hypocrite’s Lament (2006) & Fever Jubilee (2007/8). Continuing her exploration of our intricate and fraught relationship with Nature, Paradise Apparatus explores the sensations and mysteries of chemistry, perception and colour as they relate to the search for fulfilment with references to aspects of science, alchemy, theatre-craft and art making.
For its final show of 2009, Whatiftheworld / Gallery is pleased to present a major group exhibition titled Holiday. Featuring a selection of signature works from emerging South African artists, the exhibition opens up and explores the underlying link between these contemporaries. Linked through their use of recycling and re-mixing of found objects and images, (each with their own origin, stories and complexities) the works engage with an array of pertinent critical issues.
As a follow up to his critically acclaimed debut solo exhibition, Whatiftheworld is pleased to announce a new solo presentation by up-and-coming young painter Andrzej Nowicki. Nowicki makes paintings and drawings that create parallel universes where people and objects multiply and metamorphose into ever more strange visions. His disquieting dreamlike tableaux combine the seductive allure of a fairy tales with the perverse playfulness of Surrealism and the insight of speculative fiction to create disordered narratives.
Rowan Smith’s new body of work considers the effect that space flight and expansion has had, and continues to have, on the public and scientific imagination. A lonely, though beautiful and thought provoking exhibition, If you get far enough away, you’ll be on your way back home is a fitting and worthy sequel to Smith’s highly successful debut, Future Shock Lost.
As a follow up to the critically acclaimed solo exhibition “…of bugchasers and watussi faghags,” Athi-Patra Ruga’s upcoming exhibition at Whatiftheworld, titled “…mr floating signifier and the deadboyz,” continues to expand on the themes introduced by the Artist’s chief protagonist Beiruith. Through the use of craft, performance, video, sculpture and photography, this body of work investigates ideas of displacement and dislocation in relation to constructs of gender, race, identity and sexuality. Combining images and popular iconography, Athi-Patra Ruga interrogates the problematic concept of the Utopian ideal within a Western art historical context.
Syndrome is a two-man show featuring Charles Maggs and Robert Sloon. The title points to a nexus of related concerns for both Maggs and Sloon: conspiracism, terror, the projection of identity, iconography of power and acceleration manifest in popular, media and Internet culture. Rather than being a mere reflection of these concerns, Syndrome is instead fueled by their materialisations in everyday life, in history and in media narratives.
Whatiftheworld / Gallery has been accepted to exhibit at VOLTA, the cutting-edge art fair in Basel, Switzerland for its fifth edition from June 8th-13th, 2009. VOLTA is a platform for presenting the vision of contemporary art galleries of global repute whose artists represent new and relevant positions for curators and collectors alike. Conceived to bridge a gap between Basel’s pre-existing fairs, VOLTA showcases galleries - whether young or mature - that choose as their mandate to work with the most exciting emerging artists.
After two years in the making, Zander Blom’s latest solo exhibition and publication travels to Whatiftheworld / Gallery in Cape Town this June. The show documents the travels of an idealist Machiavellian hero, guitar in hand, on a crusade to revitalise the arts of the culture capital of the world. Fuelled by equal measures of blind optimism and hedonism, the search for new ideas and exotic flavours takes our hero to a fictional paradise setting where this bizarre satirical action tragedy literally starts to unravel.
Sing Into My Mouth includes enquiries into the nature of intimacy, desire, influence, exchange, memory/ false memory, self, autobiography, interpretation, poetics, contingency, dormancy and resurrection.
The works take many forms such as loans from collections, gifts, replicas, proposals, residue and never-seens including selected works by Bridget Baker, Emma Coleman, Sue Clark, Tom Cullberg, Anja de Klerk, Barend de Wet, Peter Eastman, Teboho Edkins, Gus Ferguson, Gimberg & Nerf, Douglas Gimberg, Matthew Hindley, Pieter Hugo, Mandy Lee Jandrell, John Nankin, Sarah Nankin, Heath Nash, Cameron Platter, Andrew Putter, Gregg Smith, Doreen Southwood, James Webb, Ed Young.
After the success of last year’s event, the second Joburg Art Fair, scheduled for 3-5 April 2009, draws on a wide array of creative entities and individuals from across the country and the continent.
AVANT CAR GUARD will be presenting a new body of work titled Volume III, consisting of large-scale paintings, editioned photographic works, editioned prints as well as a limited edition publication, titled Volume III. This exhibition continues AVANT CAR GUARD’s satirical caricature of both the local contemporary art world, its personalities, mechanics and processes, as well as the South African political landscape, coupled with a wry sense of humor and a lyrical aesthetic.
Please join us for a special one night viewing of David West’s much anticipated Holbol Collection, his first collection in six years ! The collection, designed throughout 2008, explores new frill ideas informed by Cape Dutch architecture and executed with West’s signature wit in nylon knits and traditional shirting.
Kind Pockets, Richard Hart’s debut solo exhibition opens at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town this February during the week of Design Indaba. Hart is best known as the creative force behind Disturbance, the highly acclaimed Durban based design studio that was recently featured on the cover of the international design journal, I.D Magazine.
Zander Blom and Avant Car Guard have been selected for the exhibition “why not…” at Kuckei + Kuckei in Berlin from 24 Jan - 07 Mar 2009. It is the second of two exhibitions on Contemporary South African Art at K+K curated by Christian Ganzenberg.
Manifest through staged photography, performance, installation, video and sculpture – Ferreira’s debut solo exhibition, The Status of Greatness, is principally concerned with unpacking and actively coercing the mechanics of political and cultural celebrity through the mimicry of historical precedent, fictional narratives and iconic, theatrical persona unique to numerous African states post-independence.
Rowan Smith and Dan Halter have been selected for the exhibition ‘Objects of a Revolution’ at Galerie Dominique Fiat in Paris from 17 January - 28 February, 2009.
For its final show of 2008, Whatiftheworld / Gallery will present a major group exhibition entitled Big Wednesday, the first in a series of annual summer group shows. This year’s exhibition is co-curated by Julia Rosa Clark and Daniel Levi, and features a collection of new works by both resident and associated artists from Whatiftheworld. Paricipating artists include: AVANT CAR GUARD, Andrzej Nowicki, Matthew Hindley, Athi-Patra Ruga, James Webb, Zander Blom, Rowan Smith, Dan Halter, among others.
The exhibition How the troubles started shows the work of Wilhelm Saayman and Lizza Littlewort, two artists whose renown in the contemporary art scene is based in dark humourous commentary conveyed through annotated drawings which stretch and wrench graphic language.