For the 2016 FNB JHB Art Fair Lizamore & Associates will host a two-man, curated, exhibition by Zolile Phetshane and Tshepo Mosopa as well as a gallery solo project by Mandy Coppes-Martin.
Both Mosopa and Phetshane’s work centers around a self-exploration and understanding of each artist’s personal environments, the labels and stereotypes prescribed by society. Systems like religion, the economy, politics, rituals and objects with which everyday lives are filled become the constructs through which they organize their ‘world’.
Phetshane, who has exhibited extensively both locally and internationally, creates abstract colour fields which are littered with these objects and numbers as tools which make sense of his private world. Through painting, drawing and scratching Phetshane creates order and processes these subconscious thoughts and feelings into each work. By so doing, his objects and numbers mediates the viewer from their reality to Phetshane’s interpretation of his surroundings.
Mosopa, the first winner of both the Reinhold Cassirer Art Award (2011) and the SA Taxi Foundation Art Award (2015), investigates self-identity and social hierarchy within his works. He uses the human form and its placement in space which is informed by politics, economy and culture, and how they reshape ones identity in an ever changing and growing world. His drawings break down the figurative into gestural lines, about to become something more; a figure in movement/action. It is through these diverse approaches to self-identification that the artist decides to paint and draw, creating a visual language personal to each artist.
Click here to read more about Mandy Coppes-Martin's solo project
