Online Auction Guest Curator: Kim Kandan, KZNSA Gallery Director

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Online Auction Guest Curator: Kim Kandan, KZNSA Gallery Director

16 Mar 2021

Kim Kandan, gallery director of the KZNSA Gallery in Durban is the second guest curator in the ongoing series of collaborations between Strauss & Co and key players in the South African art market.

Kandan’s curation statement:

“I approached the selection of work from the position of a young collector building a contemporary collection and making a ‘wishlist’ of works to add to that collection.

The selection moves between photography, traditional mediums like painting and prints to fibre work. I’ve included works that would fit well into the conversations under current contemplation socially, in curation and even current aesthetics. There is also a very definite colour theme running though the selections; bold, saturated blocks of contrasting colour creating flat backgrounds. Figure, form and line work pull the subject matter of the works together. 

The photo print by Athi-Patra Ruga is charged in critique similarly to his magnificent sculptures addressing traumas of colonial history while being more direct with the performer subverting the colonial by seemingly colonising the remnant of empire in the composition.

I have included two works from Norman Catherine and a great Battiss painting, both artists whose works are wonderfully indulgent and escapist, very critical and cynical. The colours and form used by Battiss remain as contemporary today as they were back when he created the work. The two artists worked on the Fook Island concept together and ‘A Lick of Fook’ seems to me to epitomise the macabre and comic of this series of works.

Sam Nhlengethwa is one of my favourite artists. His masterful colours and the form in which he uses them makes his prints perfectly composed, and they are able to sit comfortably in any collection.”


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