Johannesburg

STEVENSON is pleased to present Isango, an exhibition of sculpture, painting and installation by Nicholas Hlobo. This show is his seventh with the gallery, and his second in the Johannesburg space, following Tyaphaka and other works in 2013.

Hlobo’s previous gallery exhibition, Sewing Saw, reflected on the necessity of destruction in creation as the artist underwent a form of self-inventory, remarking, ‘this work is to deconstruct whatever it is I have constructed so that I get to understand the layers that I might have missed in the process of building that edifice’. Isango, translating as portal, passageway or gate, pictorialises a new gestative moment in Hlobo’s practice, with the artist pointing to the words of Major Tom, David Bowie’s fictional narrator in Space Oddity: ‘I'm stepping through the door/And I'm floating in a most peculiar way …’

Copper, lauded as an element with highly conductive properties, is integrated into Hlobo’s lexicon as a material key to exploring the passage between states of being. Sculptures constructed from this metal feature heavily as Hlobo delves deeper into terrain first explored in Umthamo at the Maitland Institute in Cape Town and elaborated in Unyukelo, his forthcoming exhibition at the SCAD Museum in Savannah, Georgia. He now posits, ‘Perhaps we’ve ascended to this doorway. Perhaps now I’m about to move, I’m about to alight. We’re stepping through a door.’

The artist foregrounds the potential of vessels and entryways as conduits for experiences with water, fire, air and earth. The sculptural works in Isango incorporate religious paraphernalia, plumbing implements, candleholders, wind instruments and door handles among various objects that act as mediators between the spiritual, elemental and somatic.

The curvilinear forms described by Hlobo as ‘frayed hula-hoops’ and ‘imperfect crowns’ echo the paintings in Isango. ‘This is a continuation of those energy lines that I explore in flat surfaces,’ states Hlobo. ‘I’m still stitching, but the material I’m using is an alloy which you heat, so I’m stitching with metal rather than stitching with ribbon.’

The exhibition opens on Saturday 27 October, 10am to 1pm.

The gallery will close for the summer holidays on 14 December and reopen on Monday 7 January.