TORONTO


WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

UNIVERSAL ARCHIVE


25 SEPTEMBER to 14 NOVEMBER

Barbara Edwards Contemporary, Toronto is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by renowned South African artist, William Kentridge. As a first-hand witness to one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles, the dissolution of apartheid, Kentridge’s work is imbued with political and social commentary. Best known for his drawings, prints and animated films, Kentridge contrasts old ideals with new desires in post-Aparthied South Africa.

This exhibition features Kentridge’s Universal Archive series. The work began as a series of small ink drawings on pages of dictionaries from the mid 1950s. The images are recurring themes in Kentridge’s art and stage productions: cats, trees, coffee pots, nude figures and typewriters. The parallel and displaced relationships that emerge between the image and the text on the pages relate to Kentridge’s inherent mistrust of certainty in the creative process and the construction of meaning. This movement from figuration to abstraction and back, along with the works’ close relationship to Kentridge’s stage productions, suggests that this body of work holds an intriguing place in Kentridge’s oeuvre on the edge of animation and printmaking. Kentridge has created almost 50 individual images and continues to expand the project.

Kentridge’s work has been exhibited widely including the Tate Modern, the Louvre, the Centres Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum, Sculpture Garden, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He has participated at the Venice Biennale and has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Kyoto Prize and the Carnegie Prize. His recent production of Alban Berg's opera, Lulu will premier at the Metropolitan Opera in New York this November.

Click here to read the review by Richard Rhodes published in Canadian Art.

Click here to read the article by John Bentley Mays.

Click here to see Murray Whyte's mention in Toronto Star.

Click here to read the review by Catherine Falls.