Solo Exhibitions

Dennis Osadebe: Safe Space is still on view at GR Gallery in New York, United States until March 12, 2021

Safe Space is the first solo exhibition of Dennis Osadebe with GR Gallery, after two years of collaboration. The show reveals the latest series of artworks conceived by the artist appositely for this occasion focused on the concept of a safe space as their point of departure. Safe Space explores the duality between the physical and psychological roles that forge the foundations for locations of refuge and comfort, rather than solely focusing on a specific place. With the idea in mind that the creation of a safe space could be as simple as a group of people with shared ideas coming together. This is amplified by references to paintings by both Old and Contemporary Masters, key influences in Osadebe’s practice, shown through the artists characters performing both mundane and sometimes charged actions.

Sam Gilliam: Watercolors is still on view at Pace Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland until March 19, 2021

Since the early 1960s, Gilliam has been creating richly colored abstract compositions using watercolors on Japanese washi, a traditional type of paper made from inner fibres of plants. The watercolors featured in the exhibition extend the artist’s ongoing exploration of color and form into a palpable entity: a physical, textural presence that reaches beyond painting’s two-dimensional surface. In Watercolors, color and support are inseparable: the paper becomes the color rather than simply serving as a conveyer or carrier for it. Like his draped canvases, a sense of depth in the creases and folds of the fabric is echoed in the composition of each watercolor painting. Vertical washes of color on each flattened surface create the illusion of folds or pleats within rich and rhythmic planes of light and dark that bleed and overlap.

David Goldblatt: Strange Instrument is still on view at Pace Gallery in New York, United States until March 27, 2021

David Goldblatt was renowned for creating powerful images that revealed the complex and far-reaching dynamics of apartheid, as well as the post-apartheid conditions that continue to impact his native country to this day. Surveying the diverse range of Goldblatt’s output, the show encompasses portraits and street scenes shot on the corners and parks of Johannesburg and other cities, as well as in neighborhoods and segregated townships where black and “colored” communities lived. Many such locales were later subjected to systematic demolition and dispossession of land, making Goldblatt’s photographs some of their only existing documentation. Such scenes are interwoven with images of commerce, architecture, mining, religion, leisure, and domestic life.

Group Exhibitions

Catch a Fire is still on view at Montague Contemporary in New York, United States until March 18, 2021

Catch a Fire is an exhibition of works by a diverse group of artists who each investigate and challenge the status quo. The exhibition adopts the lens of individual experience to understand the intersectionality of the agent of change within the collective. Oscillating from self-examination of our social identity to challenging prescribed and untenable norms, each work is a rallying cry to re-examine our collective experience. Employing a diverse array of mediums and backgrounds, each work represents a convergence of individual and social tensions where opposing identities and ideas clash and meld, prefiguring a collective path forward. The works themselves become veritable sites of transformation.

Conferences

Sommet de Septembre will be hosted online by Les Abattoirs, France from March 17-18, 2021

This edition of Sommet de Septembre organised by Les Abattoirs opens up the debate on how the stories of a continent, of arts, and of individuals are written. Under the theme “Creating Art Archives. Once Upon a Time, Once Upon a Future within a Contemporary African Context”, the programme will give voice to artists and historians, as well as magazine publishers, exhibition curators, and creators of digital content. The participants all question the writing of ancient, but especially contemporary history, particularly within an African context. They have broadened the notion of archives and ways of identifying and exploring them to bring visibility to new material and to unprecedented narratives.