William Kentridge
Ambivalent Affinities and Projects Past
Through artistic media as diverse as printmaking, drawing, painting, and filmmaking, William Kentridge critically examines aspects of his native South African society and the aftermath of apartheid. Artistically, he is best known for his unique animated films, which he laboriously constructs by filming a charcoal drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it over and over again until it becomes an entire scene. In the animations, traces from previous drawings haunt later iterations. Revealing narrative through ironic juxtapositions and protean imagery, Kentridge probes what is often left unsaid and depicts emotional and political struggles that reflect the lives of many contemporary South Africans. The two exhibitions on view in the Bakalar Gallery – Ambivalent Affinities and Projects – will showcase Kentridge's work from 1989 to present.
William Kentridge: Ambivalent Affinities was curated by Allyson Purpura and organized by Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
We would like to acknowledge and thank Barbara Krakow Gallery and the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University for their help with William Kentridge: Projects, curated by Lisa Tung.
