Connections — Fried Contemporary, Pretoria (2011)

From 15 October to 12 November 2011 I took part in Connections, a four-artist exhibition at Fried Contemporary Art Gallery & Studio in Brooklyn, Pretoria (430 Charles Street). The show explored how ideas, images and materials speak to one another across different practices and geographies. My contribution, the Koyaanisqatsi series, reflected on modern life’s velocity and imbalance, borrowing its title and tonal cue from Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 film (with music by Philip Glass), whose montage of slow motion and time-lapse suggested a visual language for the works’ layered, mixed-media surfaces.

Fried Contemporary was a respected platform in the South African art scene at the time. Founded in 2005 by curator and academic Elfriede Dreyer, the gallery quickly became a flagship contemporary space in Pretoria, regularly presenting tightly curated group and solo exhibitions. A few years later it was cited among South Africa’s “Ten Best Contemporary Art Galleries” and described by Artsy as “the leading art gallery in Pretoria.” Notably, the gallery showed prominent artists such as David Koloane and Kudzanai Chiurai, underscoring its national stature.

Connections brought together diverse voices (including, among others, Regi Bardavid and Pascual Tarazona) and drew a lively local audience, captured in contemporary social-pages coverage. The spirit of the exhibition, linking memory, technology and human presence, runs through my pieces from this period.