Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to announce our first solo exhibition of South African artist William Kentridge in New York. An exhibition of the artist's new work will open to the public on May 30th and will be on view in the South Gallery through July 14th. Hours are Monday through Saturday, from 10 am to 6 pm, and in July, Monday through Friday 10 am to 6 pm.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa where he still lives and works, William Kentridge is known for his socially and politically engaged work, and has gained international recognition for his distinctive animated short films and for the charcoal drawings on which they are based. His drawings, animated films and videos, and theater and opera productions, focus on the intimate, personal narratives of daily existence, and provide a view into, and contrast to, the greater political and historical context from which they are drawn.
For the current exhibition, Kentridge will exhibit new drawings and new small figurative bronze relief sculptures installed along a 42' 8" table. These figures evolve from his recent Shadow Procession piece, a black & white film with music. In the sculptures, Kentridge's characters metamorphosize from one thing to another, from common everyday objects to recognizable figures drawn from the artist's own iconography. The arrangement of the sculptures in procession carries with it such universal themes as exodus, labor, the itinerant wanderer, and more.
William Kentridge
New Work
Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to announce our first solo exhibition of South African artist William Kentridge in New York. An exhibition of the artist's new work will open to the public on May 30th and will be on view in the South Gallery through July 14th. Hours are Monday through Saturday, from 10 am to 6 pm, and in July, Monday through Friday 10 am to 6 pm.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa where he still lives and works, William Kentridge is known for his socially and politically engaged work, and has gained international recognition for his distinctive animated short films and for the charcoal drawings on which they are based. His drawings, animated films and videos, and theater and opera productions, focus on the intimate, personal narratives of daily existence, and provide a view into, and contrast to, the greater political and historical context from which they are drawn.
For the current exhibition, Kentridge will exhibit new drawings and new small figurative bronze relief sculptures installed along a 42' 8" table. These figures evolve from his recent Shadow Procession piece, a black & white film with music. In the sculptures, Kentridge's characters metamorphosize from one thing to another, from common everyday objects to recognizable figures drawn from the artist's own iconography. The arrangement of the sculptures in procession carries with it such universal themes as exodus, labor, the itinerant wanderer, and more.
William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he still lives and works. His work has been exhibited widely internationally. Most recently, he was the 1999/2000 winner of the Carnegie Prize. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, and will have an upcoming tour at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., which will open in February 2001( travelling to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, from June-September 2001, and the MCA, Chicago, from October 2001 to January 2002, and LACMA thereafter). He has also had solo shows at The Museum of Modern Art and The Drawing Center, New York, and at The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. In 1998-1999 a retrospective of his film and related work travelled extensively through Europe: to the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Kunstverein in Munich, MACBA in Barcelona, the Serpentine in London, and the Neue Gallery in Graz. In 1997, he participated in Documenta X in Kassel, Germany. His work is currently included in La Beaute, Beauty in Fabula, at the Papal Palace in Avignon, France, a large exhibition which is France's major year 2000 exhibition. It opens on May 25th. Upcoming exhibitions include a new film project to be shown at the Tate Modern at the end of 2000.
Kentridge has also worked in theater for many years, initially making the sets, and as an actor, and more recently as a director too. Since 1992 his theater involvement has been in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa, creating multi-media pieces using puppets, live actors, and animation. Throughout his career he has moved between film, drawing and theater. Last year his play "Ubu and the Truth Commission", based on Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi", commonly known as the first absurd play, was produced at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York. A monograph on the artist's work, titled "William Kentridge", was published in 1999 in London by Phaidon Press, and another by the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels, in 1998, edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
For more information please contact the Gallery at (212) 977 7160.
