William Kentridge
Fortune
The exhibition is an overview of the art of William Kentridge from the late 1980s to the present. It foregrounds the way that his mediums and disciplines inform and contaminate one another, in an artistic process marked by continuous fluidity, founded in transformation and movement.
Best known for animated films based on charcoal drawings, Kentridge also works in prints, books, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts. All of his practice eloquently weaves the political and the poetic, in ways that are deeply marked by the landscape and social history of his birthplace. While poignantly referencing difficult subjects like the heritage of apartheid and colonialism, Kentridge's work is also infused with undertones of humor and reverie, its reach extending towards universal themes of artistic representation, transience and memory.
As a guiding principle to the making of his art, Kentridge embraces the notion of "fortuna," which he describes as "something other than cold statistical chance, yet something outside the range of rational control." In other words, we might understand this as a kind of directed happenstance, or the engineering of luck, wherein there is both open possibility and pre-determination. Fortuna alludes to a state of becoming wherein the work of art is endlessly under construction — even when encountered as a finished product by the viewer. Fortuna also suggests a celebration of eccentricity that is not inimical to political engagement.
Conceived in close collaboration with the artist and designed especially for this tour, William Kentridge: Fortune highlights the artist's unique artistic process and the interrelatedness of his media. The choice of works, and their relationship within the exhibition space, seeks to bring to the audience some sense of the artist’s vigorous and profuse activity in the studio and the migration of themes and motifs across different media as well as through different scales, examining strategies chosen by Kentridge to represent things and ideas. The installation of the exhibition corresponds to six to seven sections comprising a total of approximately 284 works – including 38 drawings, 27 films, 184 prints and 35 sculptures created between 1989 and 2014.
Artist: Willliam Kentridge (South Africa, 1955)
Curator: Lilian Tone
Publicación
Publication
William Kentridge. Fortuna
Authors : Néstor García Canclini, Amanda de la Garza, Lilian Tone
Language : Spanish & English
Editor: MUAC-UNAM
Price: $160
