William Kentridge: Seeing Double

Opening reception: Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 6-8 pm

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by William Kentridge which will open on January 16th and will run through February 16th, 2008. The exhibition will be on view in the North and South Galleries. This will be the first presentation in the U.S. of works previously seen this summer and fall at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt and the Kunsthalle Bremen.

The exhibition is structured primarily around the discourse of vision and optics and centered around a new eight-minute anamorphic film, titled What Will Come (2006), which takes its title from a Ghanaian proverb: “What will come has already come.”

On view will be drawings, prints, and stereoscopic images which form the basis of the film What Will Come and in which Kentridge continues his exploration of optics and the construction of seeing. In taking sight as a subject, it is double vision, the formal construction of how we construct images in our brain which intrigues Kentridge. This is revealed through a set of eight stereoscopic cards, Double Vision, six stereoscopic photogravures, and drawings, all of which take on three dimensions as the viewer ‘completes’ the work with a stereoscopic device; as well as anamorphic drawings-- images which appear distorted, but are corrected in mirrored in cylinders. Reference to optics have been an ongoing concern in Kentridge’s work since, for example, the film Stereoscope (1999) in which “Soho’s mind bursts into two as he doubles up and becomes divided even from himself –unable to achieve the stereoscopic vision by which we normally see three-dimensionally as our mind fuses together images from both eyes”, or since Kentridge’s group of anamorphic drawings based on Shadow Procession figures in 2000.

Kentridge says, “The bulk of the work in the exhibition involves seeing twice. Seeing the image in one form, and then reconstructing the image either in a mirror, or though another optical device. The anamorphic film “What Will Come”, was made for an Italian exhibition, “Emergency”, and has as its core, images and music from the Italian Abyssinian war of 1935. Part of that exhibition was an invitation to do four drawings to be reproduced in the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The newspapers started as small sugarlift etchings. From these small etchings, large drawings were done, and these large scale drawings were then reduced to the size of a newspaper.”

The South Gallery will also include a series of new works: large watercolors, equestrian sculptures, collage prints, and a new tapestry related to Kentridge’s work-in-progress, a forthcoming production of Shostakovich’s opera The Nose, which will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, New York in 2010.

The new graphics in this exhibition are related to different projects from the past year: both the opera The Magic Flute and the mini-theater installation Black Box; as well as the film What Will Come Come;, and Shostakovich’s The Nose, derived from the short story by Nikolai Gogol.

Currently, an exhibition of Kentridge’s tapestries from 2001-2007 and related etchings, sculpture, and drawings can be seen in Notations/William Kentridge: Tapestries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through April 6th. Important upcoming projects include a retrospective exhibition scheduled to open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in early 2009, which will tour to the Fort Worth Museum of Art, TX, the Norton Museum, FL; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; and other European venues through 2010.

William Kentridge's work has been exhibited widely throughout the world. He was the recipient in 2003 of the Kaiserring Prize, Mönchehaus-Museum für Moderne Art, Goslar, and the Sharjah Biennial 6 Prize, and in 2000 the Carnegie Prize, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh for his contributions to contemporary art. Over the past few years, one-man exhibitions of his work have been shown at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY, which presented Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute under his direction; the Stadel Museum and Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; as well as Smith College, Northampton; and Miami Art Central (MAC), which hosted the U.S. leg of a retrospective originating at Castello di Rivoli, Italy and seen in Germany, Australia, and Canada..

Two previous survey shows have toured internationally: one in the U.S. in 2001 which traveled from Washington, to New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Cape Town, and one in Europe in 1988-1999 which was seen in Brussels, Munich, Barcelona, London, Marseille, and Graz. The artist's work has been included in many important group exhibitions including recently, The Experience of Art, at the 51st Venice Biennale, 2005; Documenta II, Kassel, 2002; the Carnegie International, 1999; Documenta I0, 1997; The 10th Sydney Biennale, Sydney, 1996, and numerous others.

William Kentridge
Seeing Double