ART-PRESENTATION: William Kentridge-More Sweetly Play the Dance
Over the past four decades William Kentridge has created a major oeuvre across various artistic disciplines including performance, theatre and opera. His solo exhibition “More Sweetly Play the Dance” is conceived for Mudam as part of Luxembourg’s red bridge project presents new and recent works including drawings, works on paper, sculptures, new films, and sound and video installations.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Mudam Luxemberg Archive
Known for his animated films that employ charcoal drawings and a distinctive process of erasure and recovery, Kentridge’s expansive oeuvre is resolutely narrative in its treatment of themes intimately connected to history and the phenomena of memory and forgetfulness. Kentridge addresses these subjects through the lens of his native South Africa and his own persona as an artist engaged in the process of making images. The artist’s films, performances, works for the stage and his drawings and collages, avoid what he describes as “the ideology of grand narratives”, favouring an aesthetic of fragmentation, non-completion and uncertainty. A central theme within the exhibition “More Sweetly Play the Dance” in Mudam Luxemburg, is Kentridge’s continued engagement with the construction of meaning, through visual composition, language, sound, and time – as historic time, geological time, operatic time and studio time. The exhibition revolves around Kentridge’s new work for the stage, “Waiting for the Sibyl” (2019), co-commissioned by the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Dramaten in Stockholm as a companion work to the 1968 opera, “Work in Progress”, by Alexander Calder. Designed by Kentridge’s long-time collaborator, set designer Sabine Theunissen, the exhibition at Mudam also presents the film “Sibyl” (2020) together with “City Deep” (2020). The latter is the most recent in his “Drawings for Projection”, a series of films that date back to 1989 that feature the artist’s alteregos Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitelbaum. They are presented within a constellation of large and small-scale drawings, works on paper and sculptures that reveal Kentridge’s lexicon for narrative forms. Multichannel projection “More Sweetly Play the Dance” (2015) serves as a pendant in a dramatic and immersive installation. Mudam’s Grand Hall hosts the monumental sound installation, “Almost Don’t Tremble” (2019), produced by Kentridge in collaboration with Philip Miller, Neo Muyanga, Kyle Shepherd, Waldo Alexander, and Nhlanhla Mahlangu, a group of composers from South Africa. The exhibition is part of the second edition of Luxembourg’s Red Bridge Project, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Mudam Luxembourg, Philharmonie Luxembourg and Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg.
Photo: William Kentridgeμ More Sweetly Play The Dance, 2015, 8-channel HD video installation with 4 megaphoneS, sound, 15 min., Edition of 9 + 3 AP, © William Kentridge, Courtesy the artist and Mudam Luxemburg
Info: Curator: Suzanne Cotter, Assistant Curators: Christophe Gallois and Nelly Taravel, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, 3 Park Dräi Eechelen, Luxembourg-Kirchberg, Duration: 13/2-6/6/2021, Days & Hours: Mon & Thu-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed 10:00-21:00, www.mudam.com
