Mentored artist’s Johannesburg sensorium
PARKWOOD - Lizamore & Associates Gallery has announced the opening of the Lizamore Mentorship Programme solo exhibition.
Dirk Bahmann’s Johannesburg Sensorium offers viewers an “existential enquiry that endeavours to find a sense of place in this city”.
Bahmann was mentored by artist Stefanus Rademeyer over the past year.
“The programme was invaluable for me, as it challenged, developed and assisted me in conceptualising a body of work and [to explore] a visual language for representing these ideas,” he said.
“It further provided me with meaningful insights and an understanding [of] the functioning of the art world.”
Bahmann described his new body of work as a “search for the ‘Johannesburgness’ of Johannesburg”.
“This exhibition attempts to map Joburg’s spirit into an image that evokes a fleeting glimpse of the quintessential qualities of this particular place,” he said.
The artist took into account the relatively short history of the city, which rapidly developed from a mining camp into a flourishing metropolis.
“During this transformation, its landscape and urban fabric have been subjected to persistent erasure and overwriting. As a consequence, Johannesburg has come to be dominated by socio-cultural and spatial discontinuities that lead to a fragmented and unsettled experience of this place,” he said.
The exhibition will take the form of a series of lightboxes with visuals that concentrate mostly on the qualities of earth and sky, described by Bahmann as the “most familiar and pervasive elements that define the backdrop to Joburg life and infuse everything with their character”.
“For me, as a native of Johannesburg, the qualities of earth and sky are deeply entrenched within my psyche, and form a fundamental building block to my identity and my relationship to the city,” he said.
“There is a deep intimacy with them, and they are tied to associations and notions of home. These subjective works seek to articulate my own connection to place. But, as they touch on a shared experience, [I hope] they will form a dialogue that reflects on dwelling in this place.”
The mentorship programme was established in 2008, under the Artspace Gallery name.
The programme enables artists to work toward a solo exhibition under the mentorship of an established artist.
Johannesburg Sensorium will run from 6 until 26 March at Lizamore & Associaties Gallery, 1 Chester Court, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood.
Details: 011 880 8802
011 880 8802; www.lizamore.co.za
