SOLO: "Loopholes in the Walls of Darkness" | Curatorial statement by Sean O'Toole

This showcase of new work by nine artists places painting front and centre of the art conversation. Why painting, though? What is it about this antediluvian technology that grips the imagination? One possible answer involves painting’s demand for embodied encounters. A painting is not a jpeg; it is a felicitous confrontation with matter organised just so in physical space.

 

Another, entirely different answer to the question why painting has to do with the medium’s adaptability and survivability. At risk of pointing out the obvious, artists are constantly reaffirming painting’s utility and durability as an eloquent medium of contemporary expression. Far from being a moribund throwback, painting is vibrant, urgent and recuperative.

 

Smart machines cannot easily reproduce what is resistant, mercurial and personal about a painting, at least for now. Its diagnostic qualities, by which I mean social critique, also persist. To borrow a turn of phrase from poet Lesego Rampolokeng, painting still retains its capacity to reveal “loopholes in the walls of darkness, to usher in a state of brightness”.

 

If there is an inevitably about this return to painting, particularly in the context of an art fair, it is nonetheless with new questions in mind. What are the boundaries of painting now, circa 2024, and what might its limits be in our fluid, technology-augmented, post-digital world? As is clear from the diverse materials, opposing forms and individual solutions of the nine artists in SOLO, there is no singular answer. Painting continues to joyously push in many directions, and in so doing probe what its limits might be.

 

Artists featured in the 2024 SOLO section:

 

Anico Mostert (EBONY/CURATED)

Mmangaliso Nzuza (THK Gallery)

Maja Marx (WHATIFTHEWORLD)

Ibrahim Khatab (Eclectica Contemporary)

nomThunzi Mashalaba (Everard Read)

Adrian Fortuin (Guns & Rain)

Kamyar Bineshtarigh (Southern Guild)

Chrisél Attewell (Berman Contemporary)

Helen Teede (First Floor Gallery Harare)