For the first time in South Africa an exhibition dedicated to exploring a ‘romantic’ turn in contemporary art will be staged at Barnard from 30 January 2018. It is curated by well known art commentator Mary Corrigall, who has been closely observing this movement, which has largely been confined to a generation of young Cape Town based-painters, all contemporaries. Their works will be presented along with established mid-career artists from Joburg that have been preoccupied with the area where nature, science and the sublime converge under the banner of romanticism. In harnessing and coming to grips with the aesthetic and ideological drivers behind this painterly mode, Corrigall has chosen to dub it ‘new romanticism’ as it shares characteristics with a titular movement in the late 18th century.
Painters of that era were similarly standing at the threshold of radical shifts as industralisation and enlightenment were shaping the world. Conversely, a contemporary generation of artists, evincing this ‘romantic’ style are capturing, embracing, uncertainty wrought by threats to the environment and the rise of virtual reality in the post-industrialisation and information era. The post-conceptualist turn in contemporary art has not only seen a renewal in painting but an interest in representing subject-matter that escapes reason or logic. This has allowed artists to embrace their medium, lose themselves in the process of making art, without having to ‘explain’ it and to work more intuitively than before.
The artists selected for this exhibition have plunged head-long into the natural world, concentrating on its grandeur, beauty with an inflection of awe via the ‘mystical’
Venue: 55 Main Street, Newlands, Cape Town
Time: 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday
Cost: Free Entrance
Tel: 021 671 1553
Date: 30 January 2018 to 6 March 2018
This post is sponsored by Chas Everitt Cape Town South