Shit, is this show even still up? A bit slow on the posting here, but rather late than never, right? Around two weeks or so ago I attended the opening of Power Play at the Goodman Cape.

In ice-hockey, a power-play is a period when one or more of the opposing teams players is in the sin bin, and you have a player advantage. Well, it felt like this show was a man or two down. The show was dominated by the Essop twins, newcomers, who I'm afraid, have overstretched their one idea. I wander if their meteoric rise has pushed them a little too hard, without letting them have time to develop. Or even edit for that matter. Two works would have been as successful as the ten on the show. For example, the bizarre fun and politics of their pit-bulling training machine was lost in the clutter. Perhaps it could have worked better as a sculpture. I worry these guys aren't exploring enough. Formula + Money = Glass Ceiling.

I was so distracted by the pricing on the Moshekwa Langa's that I barely looked at them. The impression that lasts is that they were good and not very challenging or playful.

I missed the performance by Anthea Moys. But the documentation of her previous performances was confusing and incomplete and vaguely embarassing. I didn't feel like sitting around and waiting for one of the two lukewarm headphones attached to her videos. Maybe the answers were in there. Same problem with the video by Jean and Zinaid Meeran. What's wrong with sound?

Dan Halter's work was the highlight, a mielie pip engraved with the words: "When the Belly is Full The Brain Starts to Think." Lying on the floor, it was pathetic, unassuming and moving.

In cricket, a powerplay is when their are limits put on the fielding side with only two fielders allowed outside the 30 yard circle. This show kinda felt like that. Restrained, a little action outside the circle, but no one really in the outfield.

I also attended, the prints and editions show at Whatiftheworld, which I really enjoyed. Only two points to give:
1. Avant Car Guard, I like your work but: Formula + Money = Endless fucking Repetition
2. My work was the best on the show.

Labels: anthea moys, avant car guard, dan halter, Essop Twins, Goodman Gallery, jean and zinaid meeran, Moshekwa Langa, What if the world

It's not often you actually feel a deep dark thrill of anticipation for a show, but this is how I felt about Moshekwa Langa's opening at the Goodman this afternoon. I surprised myself by realising I'm actually quite interested in this art thing.

If people can be measured by the risks they are prepared to take with painting, then Langa is about 16m tall, and as brave as a Kamikazi pilot. He has managed to hijack the current trend of painting's anti-heroic regression into abject pre-pubescent scribbling (exemplified by many, but you could say Tracey Emin does girls and David Shrigley does boys) and make it black. Very black, and very hardcore. It's a stroke of genius. One imagines that self-obsessed Britons who assume they are the only ones who ever get the joke must shit themselves when they see this stuff. It tells one very clearly that if you want to start competing to see who can be the most abject, you better understand black people who lived under apartheid are off the top of the chart, and they'll eat you for breakfast (being cannibals from Africa and all).

A lot of the works were unframed, just treated paper pinned to the wall, in a way that managed to make it look like the Goodman couldn't afford to hang them, which was brilliant. The paper used was often a kind of flecked card that reminded me of the cheap cheap paper which would probably be the only stuff available for really poor kids to draw on. The paper was sometimes glazed with milky resiny stuff the composition of which I was too lazy to establish, being a bit abject myself.

The pictures were done with bic pens and koki pens and very plain plaka-style paint, some smudged and run from being glazed. There were figures and mindmaps and collages, and some dodgy palm trees which I heard some ageing art lovers getting very cross about.

Oh oh wouldn't it be nice to be brave and mad like Moshekwa Langa. Impossible to achieve if you are limited to a South African audience I'm afraid. It wiil take them about fifty years to work out what you're on about. Probably the only reason why the viewers even pretended to like this stuff was because they're shit scared of Linda Givon.

Labels: Goodman Gallery, Moshekwa Langa, paintings