Notes

Swaziland-born and South African-based Banele Khoza employs painting as a way to claim selfhood. His work focuses on everyday experiences, working within themes of gender, masculinity and identity. He is known for his expressive and fluid style of painting that is subtle yet rigorous. In Untitled (Counting Likes), a tableau of elements languidly drifts between the figurative and the abstract while maintaining a sense of latent reality. Rendered in watercolour and pen on paper, the composition is arranged in a grid, taking cues from social media platforms such as Instagram. The text in the further gestures at an engagement with the digital age. The present lot is an exploration of love and friendship through everyday feelings of loneliness, boredom, annoyance, hopelessness and joy. Often tongue-in-cheek and playful, Khoza’s work pokes fun at himself and those around him. In style, the work is evocative of South African painter Marlene Dumas1’, whom Khoza has cited as inspiration for why he started painting. The piece is typical of Khoza’s oeuvre in its use of smudged faces and contorted figures, as well as what the artist refers to as ‘text interventions’2. Much like the rest of his practice, the work is intimate, suggestive, and emotional. The gentle wash of the watercolour produces translucency, leaving the work broody and somehow visceral.

Nkgopoleng Moloi

1 https://www.artforum.com/events/banelekhoza-

223018/

2 https://banelekhoza.art/love