William Kentridge: Charcoal and ink on paper with traces of red pencil
I was over in Berlin this
last week and had a chance to go and see the William Kentridge exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau;
‘No it is!’. Kentridge has long been an interest of mine as he covers a wide
range of approaches to making drawn visual narratives and is not afraid to reflect
on the political realities of his homeland and the contemporary fraught world
of global capital and the anxieties it creates. His work can also be read
allegorically and seeks to distil personal feelings into works that strive to
achieve mythic stature.
This was a comprehensive examination of his animation work as well as
his filmed performative pieces. Alongside this focus on moving image were also two
galleries devoted to drawings, prints and models.
By working between disciplines he is able to extend his narratives and
to open them out into much wider contexts. He has been able to work with
composers, dancers, actors, as well as engineers and technicians to develop
immersive environments composed of several projections and/or objects and
moving constructions.
Models
Always drawing led, he has developed a comprehensive catalogue of
characters, objects and landscapes that can be used as images in their own
right, as models and sculptures that can be used as props and to create shadow
plays, or within animations and performances where they are brought into ever
changing relationships with each other, that allow original stories or implied
associations to become renewed and opened out into new emerging narratives. Every
time I get to see a Kentridge exhibition it seems as if he has added another
element to his repertoire, this time working with musicians to compose scores
that add emotional depth to the filmic experience. He was also layering his
projection work much more, using animated drawings for backgrounds and a mixture
of live footage and shadow play to develop his themes.
From: 'More Sweetly Play the Dance’
In ‘More Sweetly Play
the Dance’, by using the device of a procession he was able to let all his
characters parade in front of the audience. This
40-foot ‘frieze’ film of slowly progressing shadowy figures walking to a
haunting tune played by a brass brand, is a sort of dance macabre that includes
skeletons, people pulled along on platforms, dancers, people on medical drips,
in cages and a walking pair of dividers. People might be fleeing their homes or
escaping hunger, floods, poverty or war, they are from everywhere and anywhere,
their dark forms moving through a raw stripped down landscape of and from
any-when.
On the 21st of September William Kentridge
comes to the Whitechapel Gallery in London for the exhibition ‘Thick Time’. The
exhibition will be composed of 6 large-scale installations; I am really looking
forward to being able to see more of his work and if you didn’t see his major
show at Marion Goodman, or haven’t been able to get to Berlin recently, then I
do recommend you getting down to London before the 15th of January
2017 when it ends.
Still from a Kentridge animation
Beauty...
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