As January hits the third week of the month, the city’s art galleries take down the group shows directed at the summer visitors, and get serious again. Or, relatively serious.
At blank projects last week, Avant Car Guard and friends were staging a finissage. The text on one of their banner pieces read, IF YOU DIE, CAN I HAVE YOUR CELL PHONE ? Perhaps only in South Africa could this statement seem like a reasonable request.
Across the road from blank, at the Stevenson, Viviane Sassen’s seductive, off kilter images are a complete antidote to the perfectly lit, carefully placed subjects one has grown accustomed to encountering on gallery walls.
Viviane Sassen’s Kapijmpange
In this portrait of a young girl, the focus of Sassen’s attention is the fragile, rose printed voile of her dress. In order to concentrate on this gentle texture, the girl’s features have been lost in a soft dark pool. Conversely, this makes her more magnetic than if we had been able to discern every eyelash.
Stuart Bird’s Blood Knot
Round the corner at the Goodman, Stuart Bird has mounted his first solo show, and displays a dazzling virtuosity in his handling of materials. Blood Knot is the title of a searing Athol Fugard play about two half brothers, one black, one half white. it is also the title of Bird’s intertwined knotted sculpture, made not of rope, but carved, meticulously and sinuously, from wood.
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