14th Feb, 2020 20:00
Aspire X PIASA | Modern & Contemporary African Art
64
William Kentridge (South Africa 1955-)
Whilst Reaching Down (Slowly)
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Artwork date: 2013
Signature details: charcoal, pastel, red conté and screenprint on found Shorter Oxford English Dictionary pages|signed in red conté bottom right
Sold for R2,503,600
Estimated at R3,000,000 - R5,000,000
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Artwork date: 2013
Signature details: charcoal, pastel, red conté and screenprint on found Shorter Oxford English Dictionary pages|signed in red conté bottom right
(1)
120 x 160 cm
Notes:
Whilst reaching down (slowly) emanates from a body of multimedia work by William Kentridge created in 2013/2014, under the general title 2nd Hand Reading. The exhibition was one of the most sustained in his oeuvre to deploy the idea of what might be called the ‘dictionary palimpsest’. Starting life as a series of drawings on found dictionary pages, which then became both a filmic narrative and a flip-book animation, the series draws together Kentridge’s longstanding interest in the interface between text, filmic narrative (including photography) and drawing. His breakthrough series of major work was of course cinematic—the cycle of animated charcoal drawings chronicling the rise and fall of Johannesburg’s modern Randlord Soho Eckstein, and the vicissitudes of his love life with Mrs Eckstein and her lover, Soho’s alter ego Felix Teitelbaum, against the backdrop of a tumultuous and convulsing South African society. 2nd Hand Reading extends the animated drawing method to deconstruct the process of narrative itself. The flip-book drawings, which in book form would be leafed through to create the illusion of time, are here spread out in a grid format, transforming the static drawing into a deceptive narrative. ‘Reading’ the work happens on many levels—the text from dictionary pages seems to contain lexical meaning, each image on a page seemingly put there for a textual reason, but the visual narrative predominates, as the viewer reads the work left to right as if expecting the figures to move—first an avatar of Kentridge himself, then a loping and burdened worker, carrying what may be weapons, or urban detritus. In between are seemingly random text fragments, oddly stentorian and commanding. The overall impression of the work is surprisingly fluid for a text-based work of art. Kentridge masterfully translates the drawing on the dictionary page to a work of time-based art. Its grid format recalls the experiments in ‘chronophotography’ of Eadward Muybridge and Etienne Marey—that is, the attempt to capture and control time in an image-based technology. Only Kentridge, of all contemporary artists, could draw these strands convincingly together.
James Sey
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Auction: Aspire X PIASA | Modern & Contemporary African Art, 14th Feb, 2020
Aspire Art Auctions partnered with Paris-based house Piasa, to introduce an Africa-focused auction presenting some of the best examples of modern and contemporary art produced on this continent. This was the first time an African and European auction house partnered to present a sale of African art, in Africa, for a global audience.
The sale included 139 artists representing 27 countries from Africa and the diaspora and spotlighted key collecting segments from 20th century modernism to contemporary production and photography. The lead-lot, Marlene Dumas’ Oktober 1973 achieved a stellar R7,055,600 well above its high estimate of R3-5 million. Also on offer were some of the most in-demand African artists including Chéri Samba, Aboudia Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, Gareth Nyandoro, Mustafa Maluka and William Kentridge.
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