oil and graphite on Belgian linen

Artwork date: 2010
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse
Exhibited: Stevenson, Cape Town, Paintings, Drawings, Photos, 9 September to 16 October 2010.
Literature: Blom, Zander. (2013). Paintings: Volume I 2010–2012. Cape Town: Stevenson, colour illustration on p.195.

(1)

239 x 144 cm

Notes:

Since he began exhibiting in the mid 2000s, the idea of the unresolved project of modernism has often been invoked with regard to the work of Zander Blom. Perhaps this is unsurprising for the Pretoria-born artist who grew up “with all the modernist stuff,” and found a “natural inclination to mimic it.”[1] Beginning with the series of installation shows he produced as an artist working with the Rooke Gallery, which combined sculpture, drawings, photographs and music, Blom’s work reflected his feelings during the early part of his career that he “felt like I was studying the masters in a way but from this weird position as a young dude in Johannesburg making this shit in his house.” When Blom moved to the Stevenson Gallery and exhibited his first show of paintings, his fascination and interaction with modernism was still heavily evident in paintings such as this work, Untitled 1.5, which through their heavy daubs and splatters of paint and compositional solutions to the problem of the restrictions of the frame, evoke the work of Jackson Pollock and Francis Bacon. This painting with its swirls of black and white obscuring brighter colours behind and its background figuration of a floating geometrical chair, seems to channel the spirit of Bacon in particular and his famous series of pope portraits. However while Blom’s work may echo the work of his artistic mentor, it remains singularly his own and is perhaps best seen not as mere mimicry but rather the work of an artist who has taken his influences and re-imagined them through his own experiences working in South Africa – one “who through his work…doesn’t steal [but] attacks and devours the legacy of painting.”[2] This work stands as a prime example of that impulse and also serves as a strong early display of the artist’s incorporation of modernist ideas into his work, which have lead to more direct experiments in later works that have made use of collage and drawings in more recognizably direct conversations with the works of modernist masters such as Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse.

Tymon Smith

Sources:

[1] New Paintings: Zander Blom in conversation with Jason Friedman http://www.newancestors.nyc/set-1/zader-blom-paintings

[2] Trezzi, N. Paintings Volume II 2013-2016. Stevenson. 2016. p. 17.