William Kentridge: Ambivalent Affinities and Projects

For Immediate Release

Darlene Gillan, Director of Communications
tel. 617 879 7050
e. darlene.gillan@massart.edu

William Kentridge (caption)

MassArt Presents Two Exhibitions--William Kentridge: Ambivalent Affinities and Projects

Sandra & David Bakalar Gallery at Massachusetts College of Art and Design
October 4–December 11, 2010
Reception: Thursday, October 7, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and uncertain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay.  
—William Kentridge

Boston, MA: Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Bakalar Gallery is presenting two exhibitions by South African artist, William Kentridge: Ambivalent Affinities and Projects. These are the first solo-exhibitions of Kentridge’s work in the Boston area.

Through artistic media as diverse as printmaking, drawing, painting, and filmmaking, William Kentridge critically examines aspects of his native South African society and the aftermath of apartheid. Artistically, he is best known for his unique animated films, which he laboriously constructs by filming a charcoal drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it over and over again until it becomes an entire scene. In the animations, traces from previous drawings haunt later iterations. Several animated films, prints, anamorphic drawings, and sculptural work from 1989 to the present will be on view.

Born in 1955, Kentridge has lived his entire life in Johannesburg. While both parents were lawyers devoted to the struggle against apartheid, Kentridge’s own critical engagement with this world of sanctioned violence emerged through his art. Trained in various media, Kentridge probes his subjects from within, giving visual and dramatic form to what is often left unsaid: the complicity, regret, the ambivalence toward one’s affinity with a place that could be so familiar yet so brutal. 

Drawing, with its easy, transformative possibilities, is the heart of Kentridge’s practice. “Drawing is a kind of handwriting,” he reflects, “a way of thinking aloud that is comfortable and familiar.” Known for his way of revealing narrative through ironic juxtapositions and ephemeral, protean imagery, Kentridge does not consign history to the past; in his hands, it is a figment of the present.

Kentridge is also deeply inspired by the intellectual contexts and histories of his crafts. His studies of sixteenth century anamorphic drawing, eighteenth century Venetian frescoes, and the early twentieth century Russian avant-garde have produced poignant, satirical, sometimes audacious works that challenge the certainties of scientific knowledge and political truth. His intellectual rigor and dedication to work that combines the visual and dramatic arts has led to numerous international collaborations, such as his direction of Dmitri Shostakovitch’s satiric opera, The Nose, which was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City this past spring.

Kentridge has recently been the subject of a retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has had solo-exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2008); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (2007); and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2004), among others. He has also participated in Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008); the Sydney Biennale (1996, 2008); and Documenta (1997, 2002). His opera and theater works, often produced in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, have appeared at Brooklyn Academy of Music (2007); Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa (1992, 1996, 1998); and Festival d'Avignon, France (1995, 1996).

William Kentridge: Ambivalent Affinities is curated by Allyson Purpura and organized by Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

We would like to acknowledge and thank Barbara Krakow Gallery and the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University for their help with William Kentridge: Projects.

***High resolution images available upon request.

Exhibitions at the college are free and open to the public. The galleries are located in South Hall, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston.

For current information, please log onto MassArt.edu, email galleryinfo@massart.edu, or call the automated information line at 617-879-7333.

Gallery Hours:    Mon., Tues., Thurs., Fri., Sat., Noon–6:00 p.m.; Wed. Noon–8:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public. Handicapped accessible.
Address: 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MBTA: Green "E" line.
Information: 617 879 7333 or MassArt.edu

Massachusetts College of Art and Design is one of the top colleges of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1873, MassArt has a legacy of leadership as the only independent public college of art and design in the country and the nation's first art school to grant a degree. The college offers a comprehensive range of baccalaureate and graduate degrees in art and design, all taught by world-class faculty, along with continuing education and youth programs designed to encourage individual creativity. Whether at home in Boston or on the other side of the globe, the artists and designers of MassArt are dedicated to making a difference in their communities and around the world. For more information, visit MassArt.edu.