Black Hole Universe – Mapping the Void | Vernissage at 5x6x9
by Simon Elson
This is unique: South Africa is everywhere! For decades it used to be nowhere, either lost in Apartheid hell or in the fucked-up post-94 struggle for equality. Now the people of this nation are represented and seen and talked about everywhere – even in Prenzlauer Berg’s Kollwitzstrasse, where normally you just find kids, family cars and organic home-made ice cream.
In Christian Ganzenberg’s and Anna Partenheimer’s project space 5x6x9 the South African artist Zander Blom creates a black hole universe, …
…not only merging the history of modern art but all political questions of identity. The freedom to be abstract?
Blom was born in 1982 in Pretoria, belonging to an in-between generation that is confronted with structures and problems of an old totalitarian system, to which no personal tradition relates them: neither a tradition of struggle against it nor of trying to conserve it. Being abstract, Blom says, is the only way to be political at this time. Why? By being political you can easily be trapped in exoticism, displaying the poor and strange South Africa for voyeuristic Europeans. Alright, so even this blog stops being political and just looks at the site-specific photographs of the Black Hole Universe, as well as the context of the in-situ installation that makes it possible to look specifically at the way the artist works. As it is a private and noncommercial art space, please check with Niche or visit 5x6x9’s homepage.
3 Notes/ Hide
-
nicheberlin posted this
