The Kyle Kauffman Gallery is pleased to present Not So Black and White 2008: South African Contemporary Art, running from September 18 through October 12, 2008. To mark the Gallery’s one year anniversary, we are exhibiting some of our latest acquisitions, works that highlight recent trends in contemporary African painting, photography, sculpture, prints and new media. Featured on the exhibition are pieces by Willie Bester, William Kentridge, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Karel Nel, and Kudzanai Chiurai.

This second incarnation of last year’s Not So Black and White, continues its focus on the great versatility and diversity of contemporary African art practices, aesthetics and thematic concerns. Willie Bester’s robust metal works, with their subtle yet biting allusions to post-apartheid life, are juxtaposed with Zwelethu Mthethwa’s bold, resolute photographs, whose subjects are portrayed as almost regal in their poverty. William Kentridge’s conceptual and formal explorations of human vision hang beside Karel Nel’s minimalist sculptural allusions to life lines broken in the time of AIDS. To round out the show, the Gallery is proud to be featuring works for the first time by acclaimed Zimbabwean Kudzanai Chiurai, the outspoken, young revolutionary artist willing to take on the political establishment in Zimbabwe, from which he is prohibited to return under the current regime. His prints, with their gritty urban aesthetic, blatantly address the upheaval within his own strife-ridden country.

These artists, both young and old, are emblematic of an exploding contemporary art scene that is evolving in its contextual use of various approaches to media, form, and content, and that continues to question the societal and political atmosphere of Africa’s present historical moment.

This exhibition marks the beginning of an exciting season, featuring several solo exhibitions and accompanying catalogs including upcoming shows by Paul Du Toit and Marlene Dumas.