Tag: zwelethu machepha

ARP-ART RESIDENCY PROJECT SHOWS AT CAPE TOWN ART FAIR

February 16, 2017

We are delighted to announce the arrival in Cape Town of Italian artist Valentina Colella, who was selected for a residency in the framework of ARP-Art Residency Project V Edition. The project, ideated by Centro Luigi Di Sarro of Rome in collaboration this year with Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, began in 2009 and involved various important galleries as well as 13 artists. This fifth edition enjoys the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation; in the period 2015-2017 the project’s activities increased, witnessing many young art enthusiasts as well as art students actively contributing to the residencies in Rome and Cape Town of the two winners of the selection, Valentina Colella for Italy and Zwelethu Machepha for South Africa. Young curators, art historians, photographers, videomakers and students of various disciplines collaborated with the two leaders of this exchange, the artists, through training contributions and the participation to meetings and workshops. It is because of this activity, considered of high cultural, educational and social value, that ARP project was invited this year to take part to Cape Town Art Fair in the Cultural Platforms section, next to the most important South African non-profit organisations.

We invite you to visit stand F13, where the artworks of all Italian and South African artists who took part until today to ARP project will be exhibited, and where it will be possible to find out more about all the events organized by ARP between now and the end of March.
Saturday 18th February from 11 until 3, artists Colella e Machepha will be at ARP’s stand to introduce themselves to CTAF visitors. At 2 pm, the Italian Consul in Cape Town, Antonio Tagliaferri, and the Director of the Italian Insitute of Culture of Pretoria, Anna Amendolagine, will be in conversation with the Project Director, Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, of Centro Luigi Di Sarro, about ARP project and its history. All artists and gallerists who took part to ARP exchanges in the last eight years have been invited to join and share their experiences.

ARP Project – Machepha’s Residency ended

June 14, 2016

 

Last hours in Rome for the 26 years old Zwelethu Machepha who ended his artistic residency within ARP – Art Residency Project, at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro he had the final interview by the filmmaker Angelica Farinelli which is building the documentary about the whole project. As location, the ‘virtual piazza’ that the big Machepha’s works had crowded into the central room of the exhibition space of the Center for Documentation of Contemporary Artistic Research in Rome. All around,  on the walls and the floor, the huge sheets spread out like the many figures who crowded the six weeks of meetings and emotions. After the opening, Machepha continued to visit the City. Together with Emanuele Meschini, who accompanied him throughout the period of the residency, he noted the different architectures of neighborhoods, as Eur, Flaminio, Historical centre, Villa Borghese. He visited the MAXXI, the Roman temple of contemporary art and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the Colosseum and the archeological sites at the Foro Romano, and the Vatican Museums with the wonder of the Sistine Chapel.

Finally last week for the young South African artist even a day trip to Florence thanks to a meeting with the sculptor Nicola Rossini who drove in the cradle of the Renaissance, and accompanied him in the visit to the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence.

A millennial history summed up in a forty-five-day trip that probably will bear fruit in the coming months. “I will need time – said Zwelethu Machepha – to rework the multitude of informations and emotions that I got. If I think about it now, I feel just overpowered.” What will remain of the meetings, human and artistic exchanges, the wires stretched between worlds, definitely not so far, are some works created during the residency, one of which, entitled “Made in Rome” entered in the Centro Di Sarro collection. The ARP project is now preparing for the second phase. The team will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, to prepare for the arrival  of Valentina Colella, in February 2017.

COLONIAL GHOSTS – Zwelethu Machepha

May 31, 2016

Curated by EMMA VANDERMERWE

Colonial Ghosts at the Centro Di Sarro brings together the different mediums of drawing, painting and printmaking of the young South African artist Zwelethu Machepha. Machepha capturing  enthusiastically in both figurative and abstracted the intrinsic and intuitive histories and languages of a world around him. A pixilated and redefined language that is both simultaneously a commentary on the digitalized world around us but equally meticulous colors and patterns that could equate with his cultural heritage.

Most recent prints include the subtler elements of pure fluorescent white drawings on paper that contrasts with the larger scale multi-paneled monochrome and colorful paper works. These all explain the process of experimentation the artist works through. Originally based on literal renderings of his human subjects  (an example has been included in this exhibition as well), the essence of this humanity permeates through the exhibition. But as the artist moves forward in time the visual references are pared down to their abstracted ‘essence’. Responding to the vibrant urban spaces around him as one moves from room to room one can feel the presence of a human beings, as they gradually lose recognizable forms. Machepha explains he is trying to capture his identity  and his world as the global environment around us continues to accelerate to such a degree we lose all grounding and roots with what we know. The audience is able to experience this fractured nature in the drawings depending on how close you are to them. From across the room one can see the silhouettes of the forms and bodies, whilst up very close the identities and shapes lose all definition and become only intense lines and patterns.

Machepha includes near the end of the exhibition a small series of brand new oil paint etchings realized in Rome with the assistance of Alessandro Fornaci at Stamperia del Tevere. Recaptured here the nuisances of humanity but without the recognizable human form. This minimal narrative by Machepha touches upon a dissolving of identities and loss of figuration now is landscaped in Roman languages that impressed upon the artist in his residency.   (Emma Vandermerwe – Everard Read Gallery Cape Town)

see all the images on the  ARP INSTAGRAM DIARY