Curator’s note

As we return to the Investec Cape Town Art Fair for the second year, Eclectica Print Gallery and the Eclectica Team have a lot of growth and experience to look back on in just one year. We are endlessly in awe of the artists we have the privilege of working with, amazed by their development and progression and thankful for being a part of their journey and have them join us on ours.

The Eclectica Galleries each present a carefully selected and focused collection of art from the continent that interrogates issues that are facing us in a globalised world. At the Eclectica Print Gallery specifically, there is a strong emphasis on the narrative possibilities that print based and editioned mediums offer and we believe that are artists promote this intention.

We stress the importance of promoting emerging artists and are passionate about providing a platform for narratives from and of Africa, by African artists – including the diaspora. We are committed to working alongside our artists to build a positive and strong relationship. Our galleries are all featured on a number of international and local art fairs and we pride ourselves in promoting a strong cohort of artists at each of these. The work we present pushes and explores the boundaries of its genre: testing, blurring and experimenting through interrogation, reflecting what is current, unique, and authentic by locking into cultural discourses and global trends while also remaining universal and timeless.

Each of our artists for this year’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair exhibit with strength and skill, executing work that is both technically challenging and intellectually intricate. From sculptural editions to framed prints, Eclectica Print Gallery is privileged to collaborate with and showcase such an exemplary selection of creators.   – Clare Patrick

 Kyu Sang Lee
The Seventh Seal No.1
2014
Hahnemule Baryta
63 x 42 cm

Kyu Sang Lee’s photographic artistic practice draws on his experience within distinct regions and cultures of the world. Born in Seoul, Korea in 1993 and having moved to Cape Town in 2005, his artistic practice exhibits strong influences of Eastern, Western and African cultures. Working in predominantly black and white photography, presents an interesting juxtaposition to ideas of the “lost” and are driven by the concept of time and fate. Interlocking these notions with photography, he focuses on constructing the realm of the metaphysical, the spiritual and the surreal.

Photography in South Africa indeed has been a violent one. People use images to influence and invade others minds.
Posters and news, as images are works in a similar way. Just like a heavy rain, one lives in a world with an overflow of information where one cannot always identify what is true. The more information flows, the more one forgets about oneself and eventually one’s life become dominated by oblivion.

As an art student, Kyu Sang Lee was awarded the Simon Gerson Prize in 2016 for his graduating body of work and previously had been awarded the Cecil Skotnes Award for Most Promising Artist, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2014. After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2016, Lee won the Celeste Prize for Photography & Digital Graphics in 2017. Lee has exhibited with Eclectica on numerous occasions and has exhibited both locally and internationally.

Inga Somdyala is a Cape Town based artist, born in Queenstown, Eastern Cape. His work considers the complexities of politics, literature and identity through his graphic and evocative imagery. The intersections of popular culture with academic and then traditional values often overlap and interact in through Somdyala’s artwork. His prints seem to unpack experience with consideration and introspection and from evocative pieces of art. A recent graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Somdyala is the recipient of the Katrine Harries Print Cabinet  – Purchase Award, as well as the Simon Gerson Award for his graduating body of work. He has exhibited with The Eclectica Print Gallery numerous times, as well as at the Cape Town Art Fair in 2017.

Stanislaw Tzrebinski grew up in Kenya and fluently speaks Swahili. He works primarily across the mediums of bronze sculpture and printmaking, often with a central motif of human figures and an interaction with the ocean. His creations are mysterious and magical, playing with form and texture and pushing limits of reality and myth.

“What I have learnt from my ability to speak multiple languages (Kiswahili being my second language) is that with a different language, often comes a different set of beliefs, cultural norms and world views – so it is important to consider this when creating works – I have accepted that there will be people that see beauty in what I create, as well as darkness and pain. That’s just something that I have come to accept. But I often find that art has the ability to make people see what they want to see – and its sometimes emotions and feelings they have inside that come to the surface when they view a particular work. In essence art can be a mirror, and reflect to the viewer what they themselves hold inside – be it beauty, anger, happiness or pain. That’s what fascinates me about art!”

Michael Selekane was born in Uitvlag, Mpumalanga. After moving to Mopbane with his mother in 1991, Michael’s artistic journey began to take shape. In 2007, he became part of the Ifa Lethu Foundation, allowing him to continue his artistic growth before graduating from the Tshwane University of Technology (Faculty of Arts).

Michael Selekane’s artistic practice explores time passing through gestural mark-making with the notion of a passage or tunnel forms a motif. In this way past and present inherently overlap and blur. He explores the patterns of destructions and constructions, questioning migration and workforce integrated into the building of paradise. He does this by locating his work as a  negotiation of a time of severe unrest in Africa’s history

Japanese artist, Asuka Nirasawa, obtained her BA in Fine Arts at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where she majored in painting and printmaking. She has had numerous projects, group and solo shows in Japan and other countries such as India and South Africa. In 2015, she had a residency with Cape Town’s local Bag Factory, where she first was exposed and inspired by African fabrics.

Nirasawa’s travels have had a great influence on her practice stylistically. She has been influenced by the architecture of Amsterdam, the graffiti in Rome and largely by fabrics of various eastern countries. This aesthetic stimulus can easily be seen in her works. The vibrancy of the colours conveys strong energy and beauty as she conceptually engages with her artistic practice.

Jaco Sieberhagen was born in Victoria West, South Africa on 25 January 1961. He currently resides in Hermanus with his wife and two children. Sieberhagen has exhibited widely, both locally and internationally and has developed a recognizable aesthetic that is sophisticated and cleverly articulated through his work.

Jaco Sieberhagen builds on the age-old tradition of silhouette art.  Carefully selected iconic imagery loaded with associations, emotions and meanings are placed in the artwork in such a way that it not only takes the eye on a visual journey, but especially leads the mind on a journey of discovery.

The artist uses many of the visual skills of sequential art (strip comics) to tell his story as clear as possible. Most of Jaco’s artworks are done in black, not only because black strengthens the silhouette, but because he feels that colour prescribes emotions where as black incorporates all the colours of the colour spectrum and therefore all possible emotions and reactions.

Jaco’s artworks consider the socio-political landscape of our country at large but also the dynamics in the smaller family unit.  His work quite often has a satirical element to it.

Xhanti Zwelendaba is a South African artist who was born in 1992. Xhanti Zwelendaba has had several gallery and museum exhibitions. He graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2016. His work deals with the various dissonant systems of value produced by the tension between the parallel modernities of Xhosa custom/tradition and contemporary global capitalism. Zwelendaba has won numerous prizes for his sculptural work including the Frieze Critics Guide choice as well as working towards exhibiting in the Nirox Winter Sculpture Fair in 2017.

Sue Greeff is a Cape Town based artist. In 2012 she began her studies at UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art, where she later graduated as a painting major in 2015 with distinctions. Her practice is contemporary and conceptual, often based on ideas and experiences from her earlier careers in both the Medical and Interior Design worlds. Sue draws connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and visually explore these, to find and understand hidden relationships.

Through her multifaceted body of work, Greeff contemplates and confronts the boundaries of understanding, acceptance and illusion, working across midgrounds and transitions – with memory and experience.

Marna Hattingh’s work travels between a hybrid of ne art, literature and the complexities or contemporary life. She interrogates and articulates its collective emotions and has developed a highly unique and sought-after style, strongly in uenced by an Asian sensibility and her experience as an illustrator, blending wry humour and social comment into playful palettes with a serious undertone. Drawing inspiration from an eclectic range including me- dia, fashion, history and ctional novels, her nely drawn characters jump, dance and spin across timeless, patterned backgrounds. Each painting is extensively worked and contains its own complex narrative.Her distinctive graphic style is deeply layered and functions as a hyper-textual visual language, which allows the viewer to be rewarded with an awareness of the poetic and lyrical within his/her own wilderness.

Hattingh graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in 2000 with a BA Fine Arts degree, and a post-graduate Honours degree in Illustration. Her work is held in collections across South Africa and England.