Opening:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 7.30pm
The artist will be present.
The exhibition is ongoing until May 26, 2012.
Dorotheergasse 5
1010 Wien
T +43 1 512 53 15 15
F +43 1 513 91 26
M +43 664 393 52 72
press [at] hilger.at
“South Africa. Shit. This land can break your heart. But not before it breaks your back.”
—Hilton Als
Hilger Contemporary is pleased to present Cameron Platter’s Empty Promises, an exhibition of new drawings, sculptures, ceramics, video, and woven wall hangings.
Platter’s unique vision; transitive, violent, cynical, collaborative, and critical is channeled into seemingly divergent, absurdist, and irreverent works. Each exactingly, and labour-intensively woven together to create a mind-map collage of contemporary morality.
The works on show link the historical Benin Bronzes with throwaway advertisements, empty sloganeering, tombstones, chainsaw carving and eternal happiness; rural weaving traditions are fused with buttplugs, minimalist poetry, and society’s obsession with overindulgence; A Dogon funeral mask, questions of appropriation, vibrators, and curios examine notions of authenticity, exploitation and commerce; a portrait of a Nigerian faith healing evangelist, collaged with penis extension advertisements, visionary fast food chicken outlets, sex websites, instant cash, waterfalls, abdominal machines, life solutions international, dancing dolphins, diet products, fireworks, and celestial landscapes is an absurdist statement of both admiration and duplicity; an oversized glazed clay vessel pairs sex, drugs, advertising and death with the meditative art of ceramics; a series of hand coloured drawings become advertisement campaigns for doctors, herbalists, physics, traditional healers, and self-help gurus; all supposedly able to cure any ailment, trouble or disease, from winning troubling court cases, to bringing back lost lovers, to curing H.I.V.
Cameron Platter was born in 1978, Johannesburg. He graduated with a BFA in painting from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, in 2001. Recent exhibitions include “Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now,” Museum of Modern Art, New York; “Rencontres Internationales,” The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and Haus Der Kultur, Berlin; Le Biennale de Dakar 2010, Dakar, Senegal; “Coca- Colonization,” Marte Museum, El Salvador with Hilger BROTKunsthalle and “Absent Heroes,” Iziko South African National Gallery. His work appears in the permanent collection of MoMA, New York; and the Iziko South African National Gallery. His work has been highlighted in The New York Times, Vice Magazine, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, Artforum, and Art South Africa.
He lives and works in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
Gallery Hilger shows his work since 2003.
Further information:
E contemporary@hilger.at
W www.hilger.at
T +43 1 512 53 15
F +43 1 513 91 26
