2021 | Salon Ninety One Contemporary Art Collection

LOST IN THE LIGHT

01.12 - 18.12.2021

A solo exhibition by Kirsten Sims

Salon Ninety One is honoured to present Lost in the Light; a rare collection of luminescent, sensitive colour pencil drawings by Kirsten Sims.

This artist statement has been an impossible one to write. Since deciding to exhibit these drawings, I’ve started and stalled more times than I can count.

In March this year my world came crashing down when my partner Dale, the father of my son Finlay, died in a drowning accident after finishing a 3-day hike with friends in the Drakensberg mountains.

When I was finally ready to go back into my studio, I sat down to paint and nothing worked. What I needed to process was simply too big. The weight of my grief was too heavy. Paint was too heavy. My usual way of working stopped working and I couldn’t just go back to painting familiar landscapes and parties because the world I found myself in was a completely different place from the one I’d known before.

Day after day I showed up in my studio hoping to escape, hoping that the imaginary worlds I usually get lost in would carry me far away. But I just couldn’t go there.

Meanwhile the garden that Dale started to plant a year ago began to come alive. Every few days my mother would pick a single flower and put it on my desk. One day I picked up some colour pencils and I drew that day’s flower. Then the next and the next.

It was as if my grief was driving me back to the beginning, back to art school basics. I had the voice of my high school art teacher in my head, and I suddenly understood things he tried to teach me 16 years ago. I started to find comfort in the lightness and fragility of the pencils. Their sensitive and vulnerable nature mirrored my internal world quite perfectly and I was finally able to go to those impossible places.

This collection of drawings is in honour of my love, Dale Kilian. I will keep trying and failing to draw you for the rest of my life.

I titled the show after a song of the same name by Bahamas.

- Kirsten Sims

WHAT A BLOOMING MESS

27.10 - 27.11.2021

A solo exhibition of oil paintings by Emma Nourse

What A Blooming Mess is Emma Nourse's first solo exhibition at Salon Ninety.

The giving of a bouquet of flowers often marks an important life event. Birthdays, funerals, weddings, first dates, farewells, and anniversaries are often synonymous with blooms. Once a flower is cut, the blossom has only a very short lifespan, slowly & gracefully transitioning from wonder of nature to wilted form; making cut flowers the perfect reminder of the transience of life, and common memento mori symbol depicted in paintings over the ages. Traditionally, flowers have presented a way to express that which cannot quite be put into words. In What a Blooming Mess, Emma Nourse uses blooms and bouquets as her main subjects to express her own ambivalent and sometimes contradictory feelings towards the chaos that characterises her practice, as well as her personal life.

As a single mother to a young son, a Great Dane & a smaller crossbreed, various foster dogs, and a neighbour’s cat who make regular appearances in an apartment that doubles as Emma’s studio, the Artist often finds herself at the nexus of a world that is, simply put, in a state of functional chaos. Despite this, Nourse’s portrayal of her subject matter conveys an exuberance that invites the viewer to delight in all the uncertainty and disruption along with her. Her expressive and tactile use of thick oils on silk, canvas, raw linen, and paper reveals the full range of complex human feeling with pure joy. Her painted depictions of wild posies in a riot of colour, luxurious tableaus of ripe fruit, delicate ikebana compositions, and splendid bouquets of impossible blooms capture the fleeting moments of a flower’s lifespan, intertwined with a richness of emotion; all on one pictorial plane. Fragile blossoms slowly opening and decaying express the most fundamental feelings a human being can experience; love, connection, nostalgia, and sorrow.

The exhibition title, What a Blooming Mess, uses a cheeky play on words to not only express her own “mess” but to comment on the messiness of the world as a whole, particularly in the present moment. Living through such unchartered times, the temptation to despair can be overwhelming. However, Nourse invites us to celebrate this important life event with the gift of a bouquet of flowers.

ARTWORKS

COMPOSITION BY FIELD

22.09 - 23.10.2021

A solo exhibition by Amber Moir

Salon 91 presents Composition by field, a solo exhibition of new works by Amber Moir. Known for her unconventional approach to printing large-scale watercolour monotypes with a pitch-roller, Moir’s latest body of work introduces pencil drawings, watercolour paintings, and the tactile tearing and reassembling of existing pieces.

In her first solo exhibition, In Praise of Shadows, Moir used text as a departure point for exploring fiction, space, materiality, and the role of the indistinct. Her second solo exhibition, Along the Line, deviated from narrative, exploring the notion of boundaries, as both external and self-imposed, through experimental techniques and isolating formal elements from one another.

Composition by field continues to investigate the relationship between abstract form, content and meaning. The show draws from Charles Olson’s manifesto Projective Verse, finding conceptual parallels between the structure of language and the arrangement of elements in visual work. How the pieces are situated in relation to one another and empty space, their method of display and the use of various mediums are all considered formal elements in the ‘visual syntax’ of the show. Moir’s latest works range broadly and deflect simple categorisation. Painting, drawing, textile and printmaking sensibilities are all evident, revealing both an adherence to and rejection of these methods.

THE HOUSE IN MY HEAD HAS MANY STORIES

18.08 - 18.09.2021

A solo exhibition by Sitaara Stodel

Sitaara Stodel is an artist who uses her creative practice to explore and unpack the experiences of moving homes regularly during her formative years. Throughout her many moves, from childhood to adult life, her idea around “home” has shifted and evolved many times. Her experience of the home as a transitory space has called into question the very nature of this concept. The artist, having experienced over and over the event of being removed, or removing herself, from spaces which are usually demarcated as a home, Stodel has had to grapple with the abstract concept of a home-space and the lived reality of one.

Growing up, the artist was heavily influenced by representations of homes and ideals of family perpetuated by the media. Indeed, Stodel often has dreams where the space of home and family feature prominently. In her adult life, the artist has had to dismantle her complex emotions towards these two fundamental, and often idealised, social constructs. The realization that there is no perfect home, or perfect family to inhabit it, inspires Stodel to use the pictorial plane to deconstruct the representation of family and home, as well as her own memories, through the use of discarded family photographs. Using anonymous images created by people she has never met, the artist oscillates between abandoning and hoarding tableaus of conventional family life; floral arrangements, wedding guests lined up on the steps of an unknown church, beloved pets, birthdays, first cars, day trips and family holidays, manicured gardens with pristine blue swimming pools, empty bottles and glasses next to half-eaten plates of food from a festive family gathering, empty deck chairs on a patio, and moments whose significance is now lost. These precious forgotten memories captured by other families are imbued with new life and meaning through the medium of collage.

The very playful and interchangeable nature of this creative process provides Stodel with a way to endlessly imagine and depict homes and families, functioning as vehicles through which she explores her ambivalent feelings towards these personal constructs and experiences. There are doors that go nowhere, windows which look out onto disjointed vistas, tables laid out with food that will never get eaten, faces of people who can never be identified, and negative spaces once inhabited; these disembodied signifiers are set against flat planes of soft, gentle colour rendered in paper or linen and accentuated, in parts, with metallic threads which connect and erase. For the artist, the process of cutting away the unwanted parts is a cathartic act which allows her to stitch and stick together new realities which float dreamily within the frame. Stodel’s work evokes powerful ghosts of the past and surreal dreams of the future.

ARTWORKS

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

14.07 - 14.08.2021

Winter Group Exhibition

To Whom It May Concern is a winter group exhibition featuring many beloved Salon Ninety One artists and some exciting new additions to our stable.

The phrase “to whom it may concern” is most often used in open letter formats where the recipient is unknown. For the past year, we have all experienced unprecedented change and disruptions to our daily life. Many of us would not have predicted that more than a year later we would still be dealing with the almost surreal and idiosyncratic “new normal”. With all that has had to be cancelled, rescheduled, changed, adjusted, and delayed, where does one put their feelings? How can this shift in our world view be put into words? And, if we could express how much the past year has changed us, who would we even address that to?

The exhibition will open on the 14th July and will run until the 14th of August 2021. To sign up to receive a catalogue on the day the show opens, please use the button below.

ARTISTS:

AMBER MOIR
ANDREW SUTHERLAND
CHLOE TOWNSEND
CLAIRE JOHNSON
FANIE BUYS
GITHAN COOPOO
HEIDI FOURIE
JEANNE HOFFMAN
KATRIN COETZER
KIRSTEN BEETS
MAROLIZE SOUTHWOOD
PAUL SENYOL
SHAKIL SOLANKI
SITAARA STODEL
ZARAH CASSIM

ARTWORKS

AMBER MOIR

ANDREW SUTHERLAND

CHLOE TOWNSEND

CLAIRE JOHNSON

FANIE BUYS

GITHAN COOPOO

HEIDI FOURIE

JEANNE HOFFMAN

KATRIN COETZER

KIRSTEN BEETS

MAROLIZE SOUTHWOOD

PAUL SENYOL

SHAKIL SOLANKI

SITAARA STODEL

ZARAH CASSIM

AS FAR AS FOREVER WILL TAKE US

09.06 - 10.07.2021

Paul Senyol, Elléna Lourens & Keya Tama

As Far as Forever Will Take Us is an intimate group exhibition featuring the works of Paul Senyol, Elléna Lourens, and Keya Tama.

The Artists, each in a different stage of their career, have a visuality strongly rooted in the language of graphic street art and urbanism. As Far As Forever Will Take Us brings the artists together to collaborate and converse, through painting, the strange concept of forever. For Paul Senyol, the exhibition title calls to mind larger questions about how far is forever, when would this eternity begin, and whether it is a communal or individual journey. The concept of forever, for Elléna Lourens, takes on a soft romantic meaning which suggests young love, promises made and broken, and the way in which intimate moments can make time feel irrelevant. This contrasts with the exuberance and nostalgia of the scenes depicted by Keya Tama; where forever seems to collapse in upon itself and the past, present, and future are all occurring at the very same moment.

Paul is an abstract painter who reflects the details of everyday life, paired down to an empathy with colour, line, and form. The colours and textures of urban and natural environments inform his spontaneous practice in the studio where every material he uses is chosen for the particular mark it can contribute to a finished composition. Elléna’s work often has a soft ephemeral feel which creates a delicate contrast between her subject matter and graphic style of the painting. Her use of reduced colour palettes and bold shapes creates a dynamic conversation between her depiction of human connection and the emotive qualities of colour. Keya’s style can be describe as ancient contemporary minimalism. The artist uses iconography and symbolism from the storehouse of art history and remixes their recurring themes to create stark contrasts and discover unexpected commonalities which produce unusual, arresting, yet strangely familiar works.

ARTWORKS

ELLÉNA LOURENS

PAUL SENYOL

KEYA TAMA

THIS TIME TOMORROW

05.05 - 05.06.2021

A solo exhibition of paintings by Andrew Sutherland

Presented by Salon Ninety One

Salon Ninety One is thrilled to announce Andrew Sutherland's seventh solo exhibition with our gallery, This Time Tomorrow. The exhibition will open on Wednesday the 5th of May 2021 and will conclude on the 5th of June 2021.

The exhibition takes its title and inspiration from the song of the same name which was written and performed by the Kinks. As the singer ponders, “This time tomorrow, where will we be?” the listener is invited to consider the seemingly conflicting emotions that being on the road can bring. In this body of work, Andrew Sutherland imagines possible answers to this question, expressed through oil and mixed media on paper and canvas. The artist imagines fantastical landscapes that transport the viewer into an escape that occupies both the past and future; these landscapes feel both unknown and familiar, as though we are discovering their wonders for the very first time and yet revisiting them with a firm knowledge of their paths, fishing spots, and hiking trails. These utopian scenes, often inspired by vintage books and magazines, capture the sense of an exploration that treasures unfathomable natural beauty, the joy of unknown territories, and respect for the pristine and untouched.

The nostalgia of Sutherland’s work is delicately counterbalanced by the almost futuristic quality of the subject matter; giant cacti dwarf explorers who move through the landscape, soaring mountains which give a sense of being somewhere in Asia without the viewer being able to pinpoint the exact place, and caves on a magnificent scale which seem to have been carved by waves larger than any that could be found on earth. Indeed, it is in this careful blurring between past and future, that the artist cleverly suggests that this time tomorrow, we may find a way to recover earthly landscapes that have been lost, or that our extra-terrestrial exploration will finally lead us to new worlds yet to be discovered.

These dual concepts of future exploration and nostalgic musings create the framework through which Sutherland reimagines a more hopeful future that is very different from the future we are currently faced with, in which natural splendour is second to profit; where adventurous spirits can still interact with a natural world unspoiled by progress and our eagerness to learn is shaped rather by our environment than our personal desires. With the current and ongoing global pandemic, Sutherland’s works provide us with the welcomed opportunity to be transported elsewhere; to forget where we are and wonder where we may find ourselves tomorrow.

DREAM WINDOW

31.03 - 01.05.2021

A solo exhibition by Jeanne Hoffman

Presented by Salon Ninety One

Dream Window borrows its title from a 1992 documentary on Japanese gardens, referencing the conceptual and aesthetic devices of the ancient horticultural artform – that juxtapose outside with inside, order with wildness, materiality with absence, the stasis of framing (the captured moment) with perpetual movement, growth, change. These purposes run parallel to those of Hoffman’s practice, where her paintings are intended as places, spaces or stages upon which various gestures and encounters take shape.

Hoffman sees paintings as places where language engages with the ineffable. Nonetheless, conversations take place as disparate realities invade one another’s territory. These are fertile spaces, creative through the multiple encounters and conflicts. From one territory, moves the unmitigated, primordial, ineffable; from another, the mediated, rationalised, observed – each drawn towards the other in this space of painting, first articulated through the artist’s fragmented collection of experiences, then continued through a series of poetic responses to these recollections.

These conversations compound in the act of exhibiting: Individual pieces speak to each other, and the artist and the viewer engage one another through the work. In a creative act that recalls shakkei (the Japanese practice of “borrowing scenery” by framing distant scenes beyond a garden’s bounds as integral elements to the garden’s design; directing the viewer’s imagination by directing their outward gaze), fragments of multiple perspectives and memories lend themselves to a collage of many authors, channelled, for a moment, by the limits/frame of a canvas or “window” and the selections of the artist.

Hoffmann elaborates:

The “architecture” of the space (the painting) frames a symbolic constellation that is a space of continuous transformation: It is where the “I” – the person engaged, whether artist or viewer – moves between movement and stasis, between separation and union, between what is real and what is possible, between the visible and the sayable. This contract between what is painted and what is not, between materiality and absence, brings to life a pictorial space that leaves room for the imagination. The artwork does not only testify to difference, but opens it into a region, an imaginary space, where paradoxes can, and do, co-exist; it is a productive space, a site for moments of insight.

The paintings are, thus, intended as devices for contemplation – what Barthes describes as a “stage” upon which thoughts roam freely, a “dream window” that permits both artist and viewer to enter into a poetic landscape to engage with what words cannot say, being transformed by the gestures at play.

ONLY IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY

24.02 - 27.03.2021

A solo exhibition of new paintings by Sarah Pratt

Sarah Pratt’s latest body of work explores themes of camouflage in the animal kingdom. The pieces on exhibition were initially inspired by the bold and dominant colours of the seasons. However, as the artist delved deeper into the mysterious world of mimicry, concealment, disruptive colouration, and disguise, she became excited about exploring the patterns, hues, spots, and stripes found in nature. The act of camouflage within the natural world evokes the constant flow between preservation and danger. In nature, deceit can mean both survival for prey and hunting method for predator; the duality of the stripes found on both the zebra and tiger, to hide their form within the long grass, highlights the ingenuity of nature and evolution. Using colour-blocking as a starting point, and by grouping together animals of a similar hue, Pratt intentionally places the focus on what may be hidden. The artist often stacks natural foes together to create dynamic and unusual conversations where appearances are deceiving. The concept of visibility versus invisibility is one which the artist continues to muse on from previous bodies of work; Pratt also seeks to explore themes of extinction, the relative invisibility of the plight of the natural world, and our disconnection from our environment.

ARTWORKS

WHEN IT’S HOT OUT AND YOU WANNA HAVE A GOOD TIME

16.01 - 20.02.2021

GROUP EXHIBITION

Salon Ninety One is thrilled to present its first show of 2021, When it’s hot out and you wanna have a good time.

This all female-collection is inspired by the heat and freedom of long, colourful summer days, balmy evenings, and the strange summer we now find ourselves in; a summer which has seen restrictions on festivities, curfews, and the closure of many of South Africa’s beaches.

When temperatures soar above 29 degrees, we become lethargic about our responsibilities and the allure of leisure becomes almost too much to bear; sitting on the beach, surfing, sunbathing, a friendly game of tennis, going to pool-parties, sun-downers, the welcome gust of air-conditioner as you walk into cool museums or galleries in foreign cities, outings with friends, the tang of salt on your skin after a swim in the ocean, and other activities which seem so much more vibrant in the heat of summer. This colourful, quirky, and playful exhibition is a wistful yearning for a long, hot, normal, summer – where a good time can be had at any moment.

When it’s hot out and you wanna have a good time features the very latest works by Berry Meyer, Emma Nourse, Lené Ehlers, Jessica Bosworth Smith, Marolize Southwood, and Tara Deacon. Berry Meyer constructs detailed, and delicate collage works, which combine disparate and discarded paper artefacts to develop thoughtful and arresting narratives on time, nostalgia, race, sexuality, and popular culture. Emma Nourse works with thick oils applied to paper and canvas to render flower arrangements and still lifes which seem to melt and reconstitute over and over again on the picture plane. Lené Ehlers creates intricate abstract and wild botanical shapes in paint, collage and mixed media to explore themes of journey and self-rediscovery. Through the depiction of highly patterned and detailed scenes in bright, flat, colour, Jessica Bosworth Smith expresses her desire to capture fantastical inner worlds which pay homage to her new-found sense of place. Marolize Southwood’s work demonstrates her deep fascination with the human condition and our proclivity to construct our own reality using bold, joyful, and textured brushwork. And Tara Deacon’s playful and bright paintings explore the often-overlooked moments of daily life, where her love of solid colour and simplified shapes give expression to the beauty in the mundane.

ARTWORKS

BERRY MEYER

EMMA NOURSE

JESSICA BOSWORTH SMITH

LENÉ EHLERS

MAROLIZE SOUTHWOOD

TARA DEACON