Misheck Masamvu’s new body of work for his 2016 exhibition Still at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, allows him to develop and understand his own grammar and the effect his personal circumstances have on the broader position and the formal construction of his paintings. Contradiction and conflict serve as undercurrents in the works; distorted figures transmute out of raging landscapes.
While violent motion is depicted in the brush strokes and paint-work, there is a sense of immovability – as if the figures are trapped within torrents of painted land, caught within their own past and their own circumstance.
According to the artist, ‘My focus in painting has been to understand my grammar. I believe I have created an alphabet that has helped me paint and speak my truth. I took the initiative to study how the dialogue between my reality and ideas were influencing the painting outcome. I have recollected various motifs from previous work; I have rediscovered the power of non conformity in the approach to what painting ought to be. I am happy to slide into the purity of form, design, and the mystery of black.’
Textually, the exhibition relies on the double meaning of the word ‘Still’, connoting both quietness and repetitiousness. In a poem about the word, Masamvu employs the latter in order to arrive at the former, beginning with the act of weeping and ending with the motionlessness of death.
On the occasion of the group show Working Title at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg in 2012 critic Sean O’Toole wrote of subtextual meanings in Masamvu’s work, that the context is no doubt ‘Zimbabwe’s fraught social and political reality’. But that reality is translated as ‘iconographic and allegorical; it evidences Masamvu’s ongoing interest in the narrative potential of painting, this in spite of his increasingly abstracted painting style.’
About the tussles of form and meaning, Masamvu says, ‘each layer of paint, or brush strokes, on the canvas proposes a search to resolve conflicted experiences or decisions.’
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Misheck Masamvu’s (b. 1980, Mutare, Zimbabwe) works allow him to address the past while searching for a way of being in the world. As one of the most significant artists from Zimbabwe, Masamvu’s work offers a renewed understanding of visual culture in Africa and the decolonial project more broadly. Rhythmic lines and layered fields of colour have become a prominent language for Masamvu to explore structures of power and how history comes to bear on the contemporary moment, but also how one can adapt to a new way of interacting with the world.
Selected solo exhibitions: 'Show me how ruins make a home,' A Gentil Carioca, São Paulo (2024); 'Exit Wounds,' Goodman Gallery, New York (2024); 'Safety Pin,' Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2023); 'Pivot,' Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Brussels (2023); 'Talk to me while I’m eating,' Goodman
Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2021); 'Hata,' Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2019); 'Still Still,' Goodman Gallery, Cape Town; 'Misheck Masamvu,' Institut Français, Paris, France (2015); 'Disputed Seats,' Influx Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal (2009).
Notable group exhibitions include: 'Kuvhunura/Kupinda nemwenje mudziva,' Fondation Blachere Bonnieux, France (2024); 'Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics,' The Institutum, Singapore (2024); 'Inside Out,' Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva (2022); 'Witness: Afro Perspectives,' El Espacio 23, Miami, USA (2020); 'Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection,' Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami (2020); 'Two Together,' Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2020); 'Five Bobh: Painting at the End of an Era,' Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2017); 'Africa 2.0 > is there a Contemporary African art?,' Influx Contemporary Art, Lisbon (2010); 'Art, Migration and Identity,' Africa Museum, Arnhem (2008); and 696, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2008).
Major international exhibitions include: 'The ‘t’ is silent,' 8th Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium (2022); 'STILL ALIVE,' 5th Aichi Triennale, Aichi, Japan (2022), NIRIN , 22nd Sydney Biennale, Sydney (2020); 'Incerteza Viva (Live Uncertainty),' the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016) and his international debut at Zimbabwe’s inaugural Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Collections include: A4 Arts Foundation (Cape Town, South Africa); Braunsfelder Family Collection (Cologne, Germany); Uieshema Collection (Tokyo, Japan); Perez Art Museum (Miami, USA); Pigozzi Collection (Geneva, Switzerland); Taguchi Art Collection (Tokyo, Japan); Fukutake Foundation (Auckland, New Zealand); COMMA Foundation (Damme, Belgium); ANA Collection (Lagos, Nigeria); Sigg Art Foundation, Le Castellet, France; Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Geneva, Switzerland); and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Cape Town, South Africa).
Masamvu lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
