17th Jul, 2017 17:00
Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art
161
Athi-Patra Ruga (South Africa 1984-)
Illuwane as uNtsikana (from the Teeth Are The Only Bones That Show series)
wool and tapestry thread on tapestry canvas
Artwork date: 2009
Literature: Ruga, A. (2016). Over the Rainbow: In Conversation with Athi-Patra Ruga. Art Africa magazine, [online] (6), pp.138–141. Available at: https://artsouthafrica.com/220-news-articles- 2013/2831-over-the-rainbow-in-conversationwith- athi-patra-ruga.html [Accessed 25 May 2017].
wool and tapestry thread on tapestry canvas
Artwork date: 2009
Literature: Ruga, A. (2016). Over the Rainbow: In Conversation with Athi-Patra Ruga. Art Africa magazine, [online] (6), pp.138–141. Available at: https://artsouthafrica.com/220-news-articles- 2013/2831-over-the-rainbow-in-conversationwith- athi-patra-ruga.html [Accessed 25 May 2017].
(1)
137 x 88 cm
Notes:
Excess can be both powerfully seductive and deeply threatening. We live in a world in which too-muchness is warded off, whether it describes crimes of appetite or taste, the insatiable or the ostentatious. It’s bad to want, and worse to want more. Never one to shy away from transgression, however, Athi-Patra Ruga has embraced excess in all its boundary-pushing possibilities and elevated it to art. The performances that catapulted him into an international spotlight go ecstatically overboard, inventing entire worlds to house his imagination, but it’s in his tapestries that this impulse is distilled and refined.Illuwane as uNtsikana depicts a scene of rare quietness for the artist. The rich tapestry is set in what might be a public bathroom or the en suite of a cheap hotel, all tacky pink tiles and bleak fluorescence. The only figure in this tableau is hunched forward to inspect his reflection in the mirror’s depths, hands braced against the sink. This man is absolutely, impossibly black: a shadow made flesh. Without contours his face has no discernible features and no expression, and he thus resists any attempt at recognition, any self-serving projection of meaning or fantasy, any sense of familiarity. His blackness exceeds the viewer.In sharp contrast to the figure’s illegibility, his leopard-print unitard oversignifies as splendidly camp, a nod to the queer pop sensibility that runs through the artist’s practice like a seam. The result is a tender push-and-pull of meaning that characterises all of Ruga’s best work – elsewhere, he has called his creative evolution a “perpetual unpeeling” (2016) – and serves as a reminder that a surplus can be exactly enough.
Anna Stielau
Sources:
Ruga, Athi-Patra. (2016). ‘Over the Rainbow: In Conversation with Athi-Patra Ruga’. Art Africa magazine [online] (6), pp. 138-141. Available at: https://artsouthafrica.com/220-news-articles-2013/2831-over-the-rainbow-in-conversation-with-athi-patra-ruga.html [Accessed 25 May 2017]
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Auction: Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art, 17th Jul, 2017
Aspire Art Auctions’ second Johannesburg sale offered a selection of some of the best works produced by local and international artists available on the local market. Offerings included Cameroonian-born, Belgium-based, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Chilean, Eugenio Dittborn, and South Africans, William Kentridge, Kendell Geers, Louis Maqhubela, Cecil Skotnes, Maggie Laubser, Irma Stern, and Mohau Modisakeng, amongst others.
The sale was led by an international auction record of R1 200 320 achieved for a drawing, Children under Apartheid, by exiled South African artist Dumile Feni, as well as the successful sale of top international lot Golden Mask by renowned performance artist Marina Abramović.
Viewing
Friday 14 July 2017 | 10 am – 7 pm
Saturday 15 July 2017 | 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 16 July 2017 | 10 am – 4 pm
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