Moshekwa Langa: Sanctuary

4 September - 8 October 2021

Stevenson is pleased to present Sanctuary, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Moshekwa Langa.

Titled after places such as The homestead and The orchard, and moments in time including Midnight and Sundaze, these paintings mark a new chapter for Langa of grappling with familiarity and estrangement.

Continuing his process of self-chronicling, the works in Sanctuary were created between 2020 and 2021 as the artist moved from transitional spaces into a permanent home-studio in the city of Amsterdam. Over decades of journeying between Bakenberg, Paris, Johannesburg and Amsterdam, Langa has observed the complexities of negotiating a fugitive self and the elusiveness of both alienation and anchoring. Sanctuary brings to focus how the works themselves are the artist’s respite, with each mark functioning to create a ‘mental space’ that offers the means to process loss, repossession and the creation of a personal archive.
Walker
'The real work is the work when I’m making it; what you see are the remains. Getting involved in the process of making the work means blocking out or sublimating a lot of unpleasantness. Maybe why so much of it is so free-flowing and magnificently lyrical is because it would be bringing on unnecessary suffering to make difficult images – since I would literally have to live with them. What I do know for sure, however, is that if I don’t work then I’m worried and my mind wanders, but if I do work I only half-remember that I have the anxieties and concerns that come with being human.'
ATTEMPTED KIDNAP
Figuration and abstraction merge in Langa’s topographical fields of colour as his palette concentrates on forms of radiance that waver between the solar and oceanic. Through a meditative process of layering and experimentation with materials and forms, the various scenes allude to nature, objects and people, coalescing in what he terms ‘spectral insinuations’.
- The homestead
- conduit
LANGA (SUN)
'I brought skyscapes and rivers into [the] visual field by layering colours upon colours, tearing away at the matrix which was canvas and linen lain onto paper. I reworked the surfaces almost as though they were what I would imagine to be a bird’s-eye view of a landscape … Logic and reality and dream and visions all competing and all interpreted differently.'
- midnight
- revival
Langa was born in 1975 in Bakenberg, Limpopo, and lives in Amsterdam. A solo exhibition of the artist’s work will take place at the Chapel of the Cordeliers as part of Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse. Langa was an active participant in what is now considered the golden age of biennales; including those of Johannesburg (1997), Istanbul (1997), Havana (1997), São Paulo (1998 and 2010), Gwangju (2000), Venice (2003 and 2009) and Lyon (2011).
Prices exclude shipping and taxes

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies

Moshekwa Langa: Sanctuary

The Orchards

The POnd

MATTER-TIME CONTINUUM

The homestead

conduit

midnight

revival

PAST MIDNIGHT

HOME AGAIN

REFLECTIONS

Cookie preferences