Four South African Artists (review)

Sue Williamson, Not Worthy Of, Mixed media. FOUR SOUTH AFRI CAN ARTI STS WRI GHT GALLERY, NEW YORK Bill W right 's Gallery has long played host to many exhibitions of t radit ional African art but with his new show and new exhibition space devoted to contemporary work, Wright has entered int o the arena show ing the work of four art ist s current ly living and working in South Africa. Though minimally cont ext ualized in terms of any curatorial strategy (the primary organizing principle for t he show seems to be the nationality of t he artists) , the exhibition is more t he result of Wright's long st anding relationship with South African artists which began in 1976 with his first visit t here. I t w ould be far reaching to say that four artists could adequately provide a representative overview of the wide range of activity currently coming out of South Africa, yet t he show lacks a degree of cohesiveness t hat w ould ot herw ise give a st ronger com m ent ary on t he direct ions t hat cont em porary artists are taking their practices. Trevor Makhoba's slice-oflife images of modern meets t radit ional culture seem almost quaint when placed against the more ambitious and conceptual works of Sue Williamson and Kay Hassan. Makhoba's w orks are reminiscent of Cheri Samba's pict orial narrat ives of daily life ( w ithout t he satire) , evoking a longing for t he past amidst the encroachment of t echnology and urban decay. Amidst these transitions his figures seem far too caricatured to convey any real sense of t he irony or pow erful social com m ent ary t hat t heir subject matter would ent ail. I n many ways, Makhoba's works too readily represent the myopic view that t he west has of cont emporary African art. I n cont rast t o Makhoba's work, Sue Williamson employs a more concert ed st rat egy to deconstruct stereotypical images of South Africa by relying on text as the operative vehicle to frame ( both literally and met aphorically ) her narrat ives. Here, language is effectively used to conceal and reveal t he t rut h simult aneously. While many artists have used text to demonstrate t he degree to w hich language alters our perception of images by bringing them int o a new context, Williamson's use of text is structural rather than incident al. Her series of colonial photographs seemingly appropriated from t ext books on ant hropology, complet e w ith their original captions are here transformed int o an int errogation of these original images. Each is cont ained in a st eel frame etched with key excerpts from the central text and cordened off from t he view er by barbw ire, rope, and ot her elements,echoing and reverberating their dehumanizing t one. They reveal in miniat ure t he power of t he western gaze in framing our perception of South Africans and then subvert it to disclose the mechanisms through which our use of language both consciously and unconsciously has allow ed this perception to florish. Perhaps better known for his inst allat ions, the three works by Kay Hassan included in the show are w all mounted construct ions com bining element s of public and private space int o singular albeit monument al images of daily life. in Sout h AfricaConstructed from discarded billboard post ers, t he works maintain some t heir original quality both in scale and texture. The edges are frayed and the panels loosely suspended from the w all by clips giving t he works a sense of impermanence as if they were recently dislodged from a train platform or a city w all. His images of voting lines and minicab passengers are still replete with commercial imagery. Beer ads are transformed into dress fabric and Cosmopolit an ads int o cars. Hassan reconfigures t he commercial space of modern life to reflect t he int imate details of those who pass by it everyday. A space normally...