Goodman Gallery is pleased to present the solo shows of Peter Friedl and Thomas Mulcaire in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively.
Peter Friedl/ Theory of Justice/ 30 April- 23 May 2009/ Goodman Gallery Johannesburg
Berlin-based artist Peter Friedl (b. 1960) presents work that explores the relationship between document and artifact. Pictures from newspapers and magazines, which Friedl has been collecting and exhibiting since 1992 for his archive project Theory of Justice, are the subject of his recent black and white photographs. The series addresses questions of originality and historicity—and how these give rise to new pictures.
In his video Liberty City (2007), Friedl restages and inverts a standard historical scene based on the murder of Arthur McDuffie on 17 December 1979. The uncut sequence appears as if filmed by an eyewitness. In fact, it is a meticulously constructed, dramatic study of urban racism. The film was shot in the streets of the Liberty Square Housing Project, a residential complex built during the Roosevelt era in the 1930s for African American residents of Miami. Friedl’s short loop is an homage to the community of Liberty City – epic theatre in the genre of documentary aesthetics.
In Tiger oder Löwe [Tiger or Lion] a live tiger fights with a stuffed snake. This scene, based on the picture Tiger and Snake (c. 1858) by Eugène Delacroix was filmed in a room of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The original painting can be found in the museum’s permanent collection.
Peter Friedl’s art practice highlights political awareness, permanent displacement, potential counter imagery, and the reinvention of genres left over from the history of modernism. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including at documenta X (1997) and documenta 12 (2007), the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004), the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Seville (2006), Manifesta 7, Trentino – South Tyrol (2008), the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008), and the 28th Bienal de São Paulo (2008). This is his first solo exhibition in South Africa since 2002.
Goodman Gallery Johannesburg/ 163 Jan Smuts Ave, Parkwood, Johannesburg, South Africa/ Tel +27 11 788 1113/ email: info [at] goodman-gallery.com
Thomas Mulcaire/ 7-30 May 2009/ Goodman Gallery Cape
Goodman Gallery Cape presents Thomas Mulcaire’s first solo exhibition in Cape Town since his exhibition at the South African National Gallery in 2003. Mulcaire establishes relationships between objects, images, curatorial projects and institutional works that deal with the idea of the commons, as well as referencing historical icons and forms in various states of translation.
The exhibition includes works that Mulcaire produced during two collaborative expeditions to Antarctica in 2006-2007 and 2008-2009, to install a mobile wind and solar-powered research base for artists and scientists. For FRIDAY (2009) Mulcaire collected the urine produced by himself and other crew members during the expedition. In terms of the environmental protocols governing Antarctica, urine and other waste must return with researchers after an expedition. Mulcaire bagged the urine in transparent plastic and laid these out on the ice to spell the word Friday. Mulcaire describes FRIDAY as “a fictional character as well as a history of the project, the ice we melted with the wind and the sun to make water, our DNA, and traces of everything we ate and drank, is all in the bags.” The work references Alexander Selkirk, who was an inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk was marooned on an island in the Pacific in 1705 and survived completely alone for four years on what he found in the immediate environment around him. After being rescued in 1709 he became, on his return to Britain, an icon of the post-enlightenment self-sustaining man.
Mulcaire’s work has been exhibited widely, including the XXIV Sao Paulo Bienal in 1998, the Biennale of Sydney in 2004, Art Unlimited at Art Basel in 2008 and the 2nd Bienal del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina in 2009. Forthcoming exhibitions include Gefrorene Zeit at Stadtgalerie Kiel from 12 June – 30 August 2009 and Distant Proximity at the Kunstmuseum Bonn from 10 September – 15 November 2009.
Goodman Gallery Cape/ 176 Sir Lowry Rd/ Fairweather House, Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa/Tel +27 21 462 7573/ info [at] goodmangallerycape.com
