BEN COUTOUVIDIS - Celebrate strong ties with the Karoo Solo exhibition at Prince Albert

BEN COUTOUVIDIS

Solo exhibition at Prince Albert Gallery, 5 July 2019 www.princealbertgallery.co.za

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Ben Coutouvidis will celebrate his strong ties with the Karoo in a new show at the Prince Albert Gallery from July 5.

Since graduating with distinction from Rhodes University in 1993, Ben has exhibited widely, and this exhibition brings him back to his family’s heartland.

‘Great Karoo’ was his first solo exhibition in Cape Town at the Johans Borman Fine Art Gallery in 2004, followed by ‘Kalk Bay to Karibib’ the next year.

Over the next decade in Cape Town his work was shown in exhibitions titled: Encounters, Play-scape, Still, Big Sky, African Landscapes, Spectra, and Seeing Things.

In 2015 he showed his work in the East/West Exhibition with Lisa Strachan at Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town; and The Crossing – a multimedia installation, was next. In 2018, Ben’s solo show, at Eclectica Contemporary, was titled ‘Limb’. His evocative titles allude to perception and the process of painting.

In 2005 Ben said that he would classify himself as a ‘free-range painter’. “I use a wide range of painters, past and present, to guide me - as touchstones”.

Currently he is re-imagining landscapes painted by others. He explains, “I am on an interesting pursuit, crisscrossing Walter Meyer’s path. And there’s David Schenker, who, over many years has produced and catalogued photographs of southern Namibia. He’s photographed places Walter Meyer painted and in turn Meyer has used some of his photographs”.

45“I take on and further another’s presentation of the landscape. I ask myself; to what extent can one lay claim to it?”

“In a catalogue of Meyer’s I saw his painting of Burgersdorp. I subsequently used another image of the town taken from a high vantage point and discovered that the point of view is different from Walter’s: I have never been to Burgersdorp but I recognized the image because of Walter’s painting. And I was able to represent a place that “I know - but also don’t know specifically.”

“I have made a painting of David Goldblatt photographing the horizon line of Johannesburg. He was recording his experience and at the same time he was editing how the landscape is represented. Herman Niebuhr has painted a similar view of the skyline from his studio: he knows this view. And I know it - it’s the same thing.”

“I take on and further another’s presentation of the landscape. I ask myself; to what extent can one lay claim to it?’ It is like walking a labyrinth repeatedly. There are so many ways of being in the landscape.”

While adding a layer to another’s artwork Ben asks questions about the experience of looking and seeing recorded by the artist.

And as the viewer we experience the tactile quality of paint layered on paint. Coutouvidis’ asserts the painting as a material, almost sculptural relief.

In this exhibition, Ben groups smaller paintings close to seemingly everyday scenes, or open landscape views. The larger paintings refer to natural or constructed environments in which people’s lives play out. The smaller paintings capture activity, “… things that happen in these places. I hang them together as they set up associated memories or stories. They change and can be shifted every time you group them together.”

Coutouvidis invites each of us to find our place within the landscape. Artworks featured are currently untitled. A comprehensive catalogue will be available soon at princealbertgallery.co.za

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