Day Sale: Re/Presentation of the Figure
Timed Online Auction, 4 - 20 March 2024
Re/Presentation of the Figure
About the SessionAll human bodies are shaped, fashioned and deciphered according to the prevailing cultural, social, and political order which inform the notion of the human form within a particular society.
There is an enduring presence of body images in the history of art often with entrenched visual conventions. Figuration is a powerful conceptual thread linking historical, traditional, modernist, and contemporary art in Africa. Since the early 90s the practice of art and how the body is expressed, viewed, and received entered a new paradigm. Artists broke away from 20th century conventions, challenged boundaries and interrogated what it means to be within social, class, racial, sexual and gender paradigms and explored identity within these cultural contexts.
Re/Presentation of the Figure exemplifies this conceptual thread as modern and contemporary artists express the body though painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, and woven images.
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
About this Item
signed and dated 2019
Notes
′Ben Orkin is a sculptor based in Cape Town, South Africa. His ceramic vessels reflect queer intimacy, oscillating between moments of nourishment and dependency, validation and resistance, love and separation. Their textured finish is evidence of the hand-builder’s careful touch, imbuing the sculptures with a sense of the tactile and, at times, the erotic.′
WHATIFTHEWORLD, Ben Orkin Biography, online, https://www.whatiftheworld.com/artist/benorkin/, accessed 21 February 2024.
′...Cape Town-based artist Ben Orkin makes lumpy and unusual ceramic vessels inspired by gay love. ′I hope through my work to express the beauty of gay love in a world which mostly sees it as unnatural, destructive, and dangerous,′ he says. His organic shapes are often symmetrical to reflect the connecting of two bodies — either physically or emotionally, or both. ′One side reflects the other, but sometimes there is difficulty or unease in this symmetry as love is not an easy thing all the time′, he says.′
Alix-Rose Cowie (2019) Sight Unseen, The 21-Year Old Cape Town Ceramist Making Art Inspired by Gay Love, online, accessed https://www.sightunseen.com/2019/06/nebnikro-cape-town-ceramicist-ben-orkin/, 26 February 2024.
Literature
Coeval Magazine, Cassandra Ciedal Interview with Ben Orkin, online, accessed https://www.coeval-magazine.com/coeval/ben-orkin, illustrated in colour.
Other lots that might interest you
