
Exhibitions
Genovese is garnering a reputation for an artistic vocabulary which presents a set of innovative conceptual and material propositions in response to a key question of our age, which might be only partly ironically formulated as: Who do men think they are?
The Italian/Swiss artist’s body of work for this academic exhibition comprises sculptural works, ‘sculptural activations’ and performance, including an animated video piece, to ‘engender and embody new perspectives on the male body and performed masculinities’.
In his own exhibition statement Genovese makes it clear that his aesthetic approach is designed to invoke ‘ambivalence, parody and the aesthetic category of the grotesque’.
Genovese’s approach as a whole redefines the ‘monstrosity’ of the straight white male by reframing, in performative, theatrical and object narratives in video and sculpture, the history of the grotesque. More than this it offers a reframing of the question of who men think they are.
Thonton Kabeya: Introspect
This large-scale display offers a glimpse into the artist’s inner-world and process, illustrating how Kabeya’s art delves into the richness of being human, and African specifically. Introspect is not a retrospective, rather, it highlights selections of work that the Democratic Republic of Congo-born Kabeya has created in his ten years of living in Johannesburg. “It is an introspection of a decade of living and working in the city”, he says