ART-PRESENTATION: William Kentridge-Fortuna

The traveling exhibition “Fortuna” provides a general overview of William Kentridge’s work since the late ’80s to the present day. The exhibition opened at the Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio de Janeiro in October 2012 and since travels in South America.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museo Amparo Archive

The exhibition is organized around his intuitive studio method of “Directed discovery” or “Fortuna”, in which he rejects his own preconceptions in order to allow his “Hopes and fears and desires” to infuse his projects, He describes it as “Something other than cold statistical chance, yet something outside the range of rational control”. In Museo Amparo the exhibition is divided in four sections with 284 works in total, including 38 drawings, 27 films, 184 prints and 35 sculptures, all created between 1989 and 2014. Some unseen pieces are presented for the first time, including the series “Universal Archive”, “Rhinoceros”, “Bicycle wheel”, also the series “Rubrics, undo, unsay” and “The world on its rear feet”, which was created by William Kentridge specially for this exhibition. The exhibition highlights the way in which different techniques and disciplines nurture and communicate in his work, an artistic process marked by a continuous flow, based on the idea of transformation and movement. Mainly working with animated films based on charcoal drawings, the artist also works with engravings, books, collages, sculptures and performing arts. His drawings of isolated trees, in black ink brushed on old encyclopedia pages, evoke both the doomed grace and the fetishization of pre-colonial Africa. Given the continent’s cycles of violence and domination, including a century of gold mining, there is no natural African landscape. It is Kentridge’s insistence on his role as mediator that permits the hidden trauma of the land to surface organically in his work. His work also includes a humoristic, even fantastical tone, allowing it to extend later towards universal themes such as the artistic representation, fugacity and the persistence of memory.

Info: Fortuna, Curator: Lilian Tone, Museo Amparo, 2 Sur 708, Centro Histórico, Puebla, Pue, México, Duration: 4/7-5/10/15, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon: 10:00-18:00, http://museoamparo.com