NOW SLIMEN EL KAMEL & NEILL WRIGHT 6 APRIL - 6 MAY 2017 | LONDON
CONTENTS Introduction
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03
Slimen El Kamel
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04 - 09
Neill Wright
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10 - 23
Contacts
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INTRODUCTION NOW alludes to the connection between these two contemporary artists from opposite ends of the African continent, Tunis and Johannesburg.
Inspiration for both artists comes from the happenings of the present day, from their urban environments and evolving cultures. Both create visual worlds that draw from contemporary life - from what they observe and how they feel about it - but combine and recreate these real elements to present chaotic, blended scenes that express their ineffable visions of their world.
In these works, neither artist attempts to suggest solutions, they simply present a view, a sense of their take on what NOW in their space feels like, and invite the viewer to respond, forming his or her own questions.
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SLIMEN EL KAMEL Slimen El Kamel, was born in Tunisia in 1983. With a commitment to considering the sociopolitical dimensions of historical and contemporary iconography, Slimen El Kamel’s works present multiple experiences of lived reality. His more recent work considers the links between the human body and everyday consumable objects. Opening up its social and communicative parameters, El Kamel considers the ways in which virtual and lived reality hinge upon visual and auditory channels of communication. The artist is also active as an art critic.
El Kamel holds a Masters in painting from the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts. He participated in exhibitions and art fairs in Africa and Europe. El Kamel was an art resident at the Living Arts Center at Rades for a year and paid multiple artistic and research visits to Paris, Algeria, and Bahrain.
He was a finalist of the inaugural Sovereign MENA Art Prize in partnership with Start. This prize awards 30 of the most exciting mid-career artists across the MENA region with an exhibition in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai. The exhibition took place in October 2016.
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SLIMEN EL KAMEL The image is deeply rooted within us as a permanent material. Through this notion, the aesthetic constitution of this project is based on focusing on the image and its visual rationalization through an approach that renders it a primary material in thought, composition, and development. Such an approach does not consider the image flat and of a single dimensional meaning. An image has depth, possessing a tangible effect of the past and a core to build the future.
The body is haunted by images, and the painting is a space where the criticial, comical, tragic, and poetic overlap. The painting is a crossroads of approaches towards mental and physical images. It is a democratic space of difference, a meeting place to debate, discuss, and interact. Our images lie in objects. We are in the image. Reflection is truth. Shadow is not an illusion, the image does not deceive, practice is an awareness of reality and its visual, audible, and virtual representations.
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16 06
Iconophile | 2016 | Mixed Media on Canvas | 210 x 157cm
Rives et Dérivés | 2016 | Screenprint and Acrylic on Canvas | 198 x 145cm
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08 18
La Tête Rose | 2016 | Mixed Media on Canvas | 150 x 160cm
Wolves | 2016 | Screenprint and Acrylic on Canvas | 150 x 150cm
19 09
NEILL WRIGHT Neill Wright is a multidisciplinary artist based in the pulsating city of Johannesburg, South Africa. His satirical work braves the world of social commentary in a bold, colourful and humorous manner. Wright explores various mediums; such as sculpture, printmaking and painting as modes of expression, drawing inspiration from the interconnected worlds of media, popular culture, politics and societal interactions in an attempt to create panoramic views of current issues, hardships, complexities and paradoxes present within South African and to some extent African society as a whole.
Through highlighting the absurdities of a collectively experienced ‘everyday’ his work subverts the tragic, placing the viewer in a space where they are confronted by opposing feelings; the melancholic reality and the ironic hilarity or joy of his compositions.
Wright (1985) holds an Honours in Fine Art from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art, majoring in printmaking. In 2013 Wright was named one of the 10 emerging South African artists to watch by The Times. He has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including South African and International Art fairs. He has gained that rare position of running an ‘empty studio’, where as he produces, his works sell regularly to private collectors in Europe, the United States, Australia and South Africa.
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NEILL WRIGHT Wilderness - Neill Wright, extract from essay by Andrew Lamprecht
Neill Wright’s ‘Wilderness Series’ makes extensive use of the circular, tondo, form of painting. Tondi were usually utilised in the Renaissance to portray the Virgin and Child or the Holy Family and it was believed that the round shape of the panels aided in heightening emotion and concentrating focus in such works. While Wright’s subject matter is different in ‘Wilderness’, here he too has used the form to concentrate our attention and present an intense, even overwhelming scenario to our view.
The culture of excess, consumerism and abundant consumption in which we all live (or in some cases aspire to live) is a condition that affects Africa as much as the West - though often the Western indulgence in such a condition is usually at the expense of the global South. Wright, in his bottle caps, tondi and bitten-into apples, unfurls a dizzying, bilious series of explosions of colour, words and symbols before us. On one hand these seem to be playful things but on closer inspection we see that what lies beneath the heady splashes of colour and intersecting abstract forms are hints of devastating things, as if in being dazzled by the bright lights of contemporary life we are simultaneously being blinded to the future that such indulgence and carelessness will manifest...
...This dreamscape is a fever dream, and we are rushing headlong into a painted world whose flatness and abstraction belies the complexities that the artist has embedded into the seemingly happy-go-lucky surface that he paints.
Andrew Lamprecht is a senior lecturer at UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. He is active as a curator and writer with focus on contemporary South African art.
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12
Jungle Sweat | 2017 | Acrylic on Canvas | 85 diameter x 5cm deep
Toxic Pumes | 2017 | Acrylic on Canvas | 85 diameter x 5cm deep
13 09
14 10
Sunny Fever | 2017 | Acrylic on Canvas | 130 diameter x 5cm deep
Bend to its Will | 2017 | Acrylic on Canvas | 130 x 100cm
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16 12
Sugar Snap | 2017 | Acrylic on Canvas | 136 x 84cm
Navigating the Swamp | 2017 | Acrylic on Canvas | 104 x 109cm
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18
The Allure of Paradise | 2017 | Spray Paint, Wood Dyes, Jacaranda Wood | 27 x 25 x 53cm
The Allure of Paradise | 2017 | Spray Paint, Wood Dyes, Jacaranda Wood | 27 x 25 x 53cm
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Ribbed for Pleasure | 2017 | Spray Paint, Wood Dyes, MDF, Jacaranda Wood | 86 x 26 x 20cm
Ribbed for Pleasure | 2017 | Spray Paint, Wood Dyes, MDF, Jacaranda Wood | 86 x 26 x 20cm
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The Remains of the Day | 2017 | Spray Paint, Wood Dyes, Jacaranda Wood | 33 x 33 x 55cm
The Remains of the Day | 2017 | Spray Paint, Wood Dyes, Jacaranda Wood | 33 x 33 x 55cm
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F O R E N Q U I R I E S P L E A S E C O N TA C T
London Christian Sulger-Buel
Tel
:
+44 203 268 2101
Cell
:
+44 7775 782 955
christian@sulger-buel-lovell.com
www.sulger-buel-lovell.com
Cape Town Tamzin Lovell Miller
Tel
:
+27 21 447 5918
Cell
:
+27 79 176 4292
tamzin@sulger-buel-lovell.com
S U LG E R - B U E L LO V E L L
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S U LG E R - B U E L LO V E L L