Dieu Donné is pleased to present an exhibition of work by William Kentridge featuring Sheets of Evidence, a new limited edition book of 18 watermarked images and text created by the artist. Conceptually, the book was designed to reveal nothing at first glance. The viewer is encouraged to delve deeper and quite literally look beneath the surface, allowing light to reveal the subtle images and text hidden in the white sheets of handmade paper. Universal themes such as love, intimacy, human relations, and death are found in these exquisite watermark “drawings” and original writings. Through the use of the watermark technique the artist continues his exploration of light and perspective, and like his films these invisible drawings are revealed only when illuminated from behind. To complement the book, the artist created two individual watermark “drawings” which illustrate erotic relations and tensions in couples.

In addition, the exhibition will feature two earlier projects created in collaboration with Kentridge. In Thinking in Water, a suite of three works, the paper becomes a middle ground with the imagery reflected in both subtractive and additive papermaking techniques. Two drawings, one of a dancing couple and another of a typewriter, were translated into traditional copper wire watermarks. The artist added images and text to each watermarked sheet by applying paper pulp in a pulp painting technique.

Also included in the exhibition is Receiver, a limited edition book published in 2006, which features twenty-three etchings, photogravures, and dry points by Kentridge along with seven poems the artist selected by the Nobel Laureate poet Wislawa Szymborska. The poetry and imagery in this edition complement themes the artist explores in his art: imagination, the demands of reality, the relationship between the interior/exterior world, and moments of life lived, observed, and recorded in the studio and on the planet.

William Kentridge (b. 1955 South Africa) is most widely known for his animated films based on his charcoal drawings, and has worked extensively in varied mediums such as performance, sculpture, books and prints. The exhibition Sheets of Evidence will coincide with a survey of his work, William Kentridge: Five Themes presented at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Opera’s March 2010 premier of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, directed and designed by Kentridge.