A new exhibition at Absa Gallery questions humans’ relationship with earth
JOBURG – Absa Gallery hosts riveting new solo exhibition from L'Atelier winner Kai Lossgott.
2015 L’Atelier competition winner, Kai Lossgott, questions a human’s relationship with the world and the environment in his new exhibition, hunter-gatherer.
The question ‘what is waste?’ interrogates the idea of how people and things end up being considered useless. This is the critical thinking which underscores this solo exhibition.
Lossgott was awarded a six-month art residency at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris.
hunter-gatherer, his first solo exhibition since his return from France, is hosted by the Absa Gallery and runs from 21 May to 15 June.
His work investigates questions of personal and environmental health and speaks about human agency within the socioecological crisis.
In the current age of the earth, which some geologists have called the Anthropocene, human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment. This is the consequence of the industrial activities surrounding the production of our discarded objects; waste that apparently no longer has a use.
“My current work centres around questions of value and the notion of intrinsic worth; the appreciation or conservation of things or matters for their own sake rather than for human gain,” Lossgott explained.
One of the human-driven manifestations of the Anthropocene is climate change and the sixth mass extinction of species.
“As an artist, interrogating the ‘human’ in the ‘world’ has meant that my tools have been aesthetic or perceptive. In hunter-gatherer, the minute, jumbled and discarded fragments of urban life, suddenly attract attention through slow and careful rearrangement.
“Experimenting with mimicking these disciplinary modes of perception and presentation on the street as the ‘hunter-gatherer’, I draw attention to the abandoned value, material and symbolism of former industrial ‘resources’.”
In order to practice what he preaches, Lossgott aims to have a fully sustainable art practice and has personally pursued the use of repurposed, non-toxic materials and practices with a low carbon footprint wherever possible.
The artist will do a walk-about in the gallery on 26 May as well as 2 and 9 June.
Edited by Stacey Woensdregt
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