Kentridge william biography
William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa where he currently lives and works. Often drawing from socio-political conditions in post-apartheid South Africa, William Kentridge’s work takes on a form that is expressionist in nature. For Kentridge, the process of recording history is constructed from reconfigured fragments to arrive at a provisional understanding of the past—this act of recording, dismembering and reordering crosses over into an essential activity of the studio. His work spans a diverse range of artistic media such as drawing, performance, film, printmaking, sculpture and painting. Kentridge has also directed a number of acclaimed operas and theatrical productions.
Major exhibitions of his work have been shown at MFA Houston, Texas (2023); The Broad Museum, Los Angeles (2022); the Royal Academy, London (2022); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2019); and a traveling show which opened at the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2016 and travelled to subsequent venues, including the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark and the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2017). In 2016 his 500 meter frieze Triumphs and Laments was presented along the banks of the Tiber River in Rome. Notes Towards a Model Opera, shown at the Ullens Center in Beijing, China (2015) travelled as Peripheral Thinking to The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2016). A major traveling exhibition, Fortuna, toured multiple venues in Latin America from 2012-2015. Kentridge has participated in Documenta (2012, 2002, 1997) as well as the Venice Biennale (2015, 2005, 1999 and 1993).
William Kentridge
Artist Bio
William Kentridge uses drawings to create films. In his works, unlike in traditional animation that employs multiple drawings to denote change and movement, Kentridge erases and alters a single, stable drawing while recording the changes with stop-motion camera work. He modifies the drawing slightly, goes to the camera, and begins what he calls “the rather dumb physical activity of stalking the drawing, or walking backwards and forwards between the camera and drawing; raising, shifting, adapting the image.” The result is a hybrid of drawing and film that has been highly praised for both its innovative manipulation of media and its ability to look at troubling social issues in a way that is neither sentimental nor aggrandized. William Kentridge stands assured as an exciting visual artist, a profound philosopher, and a subtle symbol for peace. He always wears a crisp white shirt and quotes the angelic Reverend Desmond Tutu - a person with compassionate awareness of human fallibility from the self outwards - as one of his greatest influences. Born, raised, and still living today at the heart of Johannesburg, South Africa, Kentridge's identity is intrinsically bound within the complex history and injustices of his homeland. To say that he is primarily a political artist however is in many ways a misleading starting point from which to consider Kentridge's practice. As a human who cares deeply and one who is connected to his surroundings, current and contemporary happenings do appear in the artist's work and these can include incidents of violence, racial prejudice, and traces of the apartheid system. .
South Africa, where Kentridge was born and continues to work, is the focal point of his studio practice. Kentridge addresses apartheid and other social wounds without tackling the issues head-on, making them susceptible either to redemption that comes too easily or to a rendering of their history that is too spectacular. He enters into historical discussions through the lives of three fictional characters: Soho Eckstein, Mrs. Eckstein, and Felix Teitelbaum. Their individual lives are set against the wide, political landscape of South Africa as well as the deeper forces of life like renewal and destruction. The various vectors of thoughts, feelings, and inner turmoil of the characters, represented sometimes by animals or lines or other markings, spill across Kentridge’s images and frames. The personal and public become critically mixed, neither free of guilt nor completely capable of redemption.
In Stereoscope, 1999 Soho Eckstein is portrayed as interconnected with both images of the social injustices and upheaval of South Africa and his own sort of primal, fractured existence. The stereoscope, a device used to unite split images into the illusion of a coherent visu Summary of William Kentridge
Overall, Kentridge's tendencies towards poetic, philosophical, and theatrical ways of thinking are all stronger than any specific political mindset. Recurrent themes are timeless and universal; these include an interest in self, in relationships, in time, and in the cycle of life. Indeed Kentridge is so determined to mimic the "real" experience of being human that he moves fluidly between, and combines many different genres, of art. He uses drawing, printmaking, film, and performance and collages these different fragments of media together looking to achieve a more honest depiction of human experience than any sort of singular, linear, and tightly framed version of art. People are presented as uncertain, divided and chaotic, living in a world with much the same characteristics. Kentridge consistently well illustrates that any overarching view of life is likely non-sensical and impossible to follow, but interesting to consider all the same. Accomplishments