For some time now local and international artists have been making some complex observations about a global world in turmoil and flux. This consideration, together with issues around security and volatile social conditions, led the Goodman Gallery to foreground these matters in the works they selected for Art 42 Basel.
Art 42 Basel, taking place in Basel, Switzerland until 19 June 2011, features some 300 galleries from across the globe and is recongised as one of the premium showcases of modern and contemporary art.
The works selected by the Goodman Gallery for Art 42 Basel are all centred around aspects of security.
Two works by Kendell Geers can be seen at Art 42 Basel, with both pieces grappling with the visible symbols of white South African paranoia and a culture of fear. Geers uses barbed wire, the vicious South African invention, in his work Blade Runner VI, which seeks to examine the tension between lawlessness and forceful control.
Mikhael Subotzky presents a new video work comprising of found CCTV footage from down town Johannesburg. The result is a montage of extreme opportunistic violence including murder, theft, car hijacking and assault.
Similarly, David Goldblatt similarly "unmasks" the often faceless and generalised idea of ‘the criminal’ in his Ex-Offenders series.
For Kudzanai Chiurai a monstrous sculpture developed from an ongoing interest and critique of political power. The State of the Nation sculpture is a throne based on a cast of his body and face, meant as an ironic imagining of a presidential inauguration.
Also exploring issues around security, the work of Ghada Amer, Willem Boshff, William Kentridge, Sigalit Landau and Tracey Rose can also be seen at Art 42 Basel.
