Steve Bandoma the first young black artist at NIROX FOUNDATION

Steve Bandoma is a Congolese performance and visual artist who has been in residence at NIROX for the past month. He has produced a compelling body of mixed media works on paper which he will show in the Coolroom Studio at NIROX.
This is a unique opportunity to view the work in production and to engage with the artist in the relaxed environment of his studio on the banks of the Blauwbankspruit River.

Bandoma uses water color, ink and clippings from contemporary glossy publications to interrogate the excesses and imbalances of the contemporary world, with exuberance, intelligence and a refined aesthetic which subverts stereotypical expectations of the African artist in a post-colonial world… The result is a visually dynamic reconstruction and analysis of a sometimes meaningless contemporary world overtaken with images and objects of excessive desire and affluence at the expense of the environment and humanity.



Bandoma questions the limits of his world - the physical magazines that overwhelm us; the huge effort and cost that delivers them to readers who scan them superficially and then stack them never to be considered again. Steve breathes new life into them. Deploying their own excess in the expression of his challenge against their validity - Provocatively addressing the politics, religious profusion, global environmental issues, racial differences and consumerism.




Punishment, from lost paradise, 2011, installation, variable














Steve Bandoma at his studio.



Rachel
Curator in training
NIROX Foundation
0834348541

Steve Bandoma au CCF Pointe-Noire

Mon cheval blanc,form ecstasy series,2011

« Le travail actuel de Steve Bandoma semble relever d’une sorte d’expressionisme mâtiné de surréalisme. Sa façon de rendre un monde en déflagaration nous renvoie à l’idée de destruction, de bombardement, d’anéantissement et ne semble pas étranger aux violences des guerres qui ont déchirées l’Est de la République Démocratique du Congo. Mais un je-ne-sais-quoi de fragile en mitige le pathétique pour le plonger dans une sorte d’onirisme désenchanté. Peut-être est-ce du fait de l’effort volontaire de cet artiste de ne pas coller trop littéralement à une conjoncture qui, quoique mondiale, semble être devenue sur toutes les chaines de télévision du monde, sur Internet et les journaux la carte postale du Continent ?
En effet, l’artiste nous transporte dans un monde intermédiaire entre préocupations temporelles et saut dans l’ intemporel. En cela son attitude est celle des

artistes d’aujourd’hui, non strictement localisés, et qui inventent un langage nouveau à partir d’éléments rassemblés aux quatre coins du globe. D’ailleurs, si l’on ne cherche pas à établir le parallèle volontaire entre l’oeuvre et l’espace territorial originel de l’artiste, force nous est de constater sa non territorialité. Il ne s’agit donc plus ici d’une dynamique de glocalisation, comme on a pu le dire au sujet d’artistes qui investissent le coeur du monde des questions liées à leur ancrage géographique ou ethnique en partant du local vers le global, mais de celle qui sur l’établi de la motilité des influences planétaires forge un art de partout et de nulle part. Un art qui est celui né d’une culture commune, universelle et qui prend racine sur tous les sols, voir en dehors des sols.
La première impression que nous avons eu devant cette création était son apparence végétale: on aurait dit des actes épars qui cherchaient à ce raciner dans l’espace. Une sorte d’errance, de

dérive spatiale après une sorte d’explosion primordiale, mais dont les éléments seraient restés pris dans une sorte de gélatine. L’artiste serait-il en quête ou serait-il au delà de la quête, dans un ailleurs sans issue, une accélération de la prise de fuite, depuis la rupture amorcée avec les formules un peu rances de l’Académie des Beaux-arts de Kinshasa? Cela est bien possible.
Steve Bandoma a fait partie du groupe Librisme synergie (dont la naissance remonte à l’année 2002), l’une des branches du Librisme originel, mouvement de l’art contemporain kinois qui refusa dès 1996 l’enfermement dans les poncifs académiques basés sur le naturalisme et l’art négro-africain ».


Patrick Tankama
artiste plasticien et critique d’art

Steve Bandoma au CCF Pointe-Noire

Vernissage le Mercredi 09 Mars à 19h




Artist in Residence at CCF

Beings and things floating on paper, hybrid characters: the latest drawings, collages of Steve Bandoma give the impression of having been executed just after the final explosion or a series of genetic mutations. Big Bang reversed the laws of evolution as reviewed and corrected in a parallel universe.
... The vocabulary of the artist, made up of elements from a mix of eras and places ... seems to enjoy the cultural backgrounds to establish an art deterritorialized as aboveground.
Expressionists, fragile, funny, acidic, these drawings would not they leak beneficial?


Bandoma Steve was born in 1981. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa, during the period which he is part of the collective Librisme Synergy, he settled in 2005 in South Africa in Johannesburg first and then to Cape Town. Winner of numerous awards and fellowships residences (Pro Helvetia, Zurich / Visa for creating, Culturesfrance / Buzz Book 2009 Art Collection, USA), he was also a teacher and coordinator of projects initiated by (Visual Arts Network in South Africa / Amani Art Festival)...

By Eric Girard Miclet


FRENCH VERSION

Êtres et choses flottant sur le papier, personnages hybrides : les derniers dessins-collages de Steve Bandoma donnent l’impression d’avoir été exécutés juste après la déflagration finale ou une série de mutations génétiques. Big-bang inversé, lois de l’évolution revues et corrigées comme dans un univers parallèle.
...Le vocabulaire de l’artiste, fait d’éléments provenant d’un mix d’époques et de lieux..., semble s’amuser des contextes culturels pour mettre en place un art déterritorialisé, comme hors sol. Expressionnistes et fragiles, drôles et acides, ces dessins ne seraient-ils pas des fuites salutaires ?




Steve Bandoma est né en 1981. Après des études à l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Kinshasa, période pendant laquelle il fait partie du collectif Librisme Synergie, il s’installe en 2005 en Afrique du Sud, à Johannesburg d’abord, puis à Cape Town. Lauréat de plusieurs prix et bourses de résidences (Pro Helvetia, Zurich / Visa pour la création, Culturesfrance / Art Buzz Book 2009 Collection, USA), il est également enseignant et coordonnateur de projets (Visual Art Network in South Africa / Amani Art Festival).

Par Eric Girard Miclet

Up and Down – Bekkersdal, Gauteng and Masiphumelele, Western Cape

Up and Down aims to create an experience of participation somewhere between sport and artistic site-specific interventions. Bandoma and Mbikayi aim to build two soccer pitches, one in Gauteng and one in the Western Cape. Playing with the metaphor of the ‘level playing field’, they will be traditional soccer fields with a difference: one will be built on a hill and the other in a valley with the fields conforming to the shape of the landscape. The project intends to foster dialogue between foreign nationals living in the town and local residents through soccer matches on these pitches.












UP and Down is one of the diverse projects supported and initiated by the Visual Art Network in South Africa (VANSA). UP and DOWN is runned by Maurice Mbikayi and Myself It's actually still in its research step as we didn't yet get all funding required for its realisation.However for the research funding we got we run two different workshops one in Bekkeersdal-Gauteng(Down)and another one in Masipumelele-Western Cape(DOWN).















In May 2010, VANSA put out a call for proposals for the project "Two Thousand reason to live in a small Town" and Ten Reasons to live in a Small Town, with a deadline for submissions in August. A series of project briefing and proposal writing workshops were held across the during the course of June and July. Please visit http://www.vansa.co.za/2010-reasons-to-live-in-a-small-town-submission-guidelines-1/
to find out more about the brief for the project.





























A large number of exceptional proposals were received, and we would like to thank all who engaged with the project concept. A total of seven projects were finally chosen by the curatorial team VANSA convened for the project, comprised of Nontobeko Ntombela, Rat Western, Rike Sitas, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt and Joseph Gaylard. VANSA has also made available smaller project development commissions against four proposals that were felt to show substantial potential.











In October 2010, we convened a weekend workshop involving all of the commissioned artists and the curatorial team, aimed at sharing ideas, building a ‘community of practice’ and putting in place practical plans for the realization of projects. Kindly hosted by the Nirox Foundation, the weekend was a great success, opening up lots of new possibilities and ideas for all involved.













For ongoing updates, insights and images related to the project posted by the artists and curators, visit: http://www.vansa2010reasons.blogspot.com/

The Menippean uprising

There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment.
- Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan)

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
- J.R.R. Tolkien

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.
- Maya Angelou

The Menippean Uprising explores the idea of the imaginary, the unreal and the fantastical. The focus is on artworks that are of an escapist nature; works that intuitively venture toward the irrational, the grotesque, the pleasurable.

The title of the exhibition references Menippean Satire*, and it aims to illustrate the power that fantastical artworks have in framing contemporary issues in new ways, while interrogating some of the traditional reservations of the genre. These reservations include the mutual dependency of realism & the fantastic, the subservience of fantastical art to literature & mythology, and the perilous proximity of the fantastical sublime to its populist counterpart - fantasy**

The following artists will exhibit works in a variety of media and presentation strategies: Steve Bandoma, Belinda Blignaut, Dirk Bell, Anja De Klerk, Adriaan de Villiers, Pierre Fouché, Alice Goldin, Liza Grobler, Walter Oltmann, Mendisa Pantsi, Michael Taylor, Hentie van der Merwe, Dale Washkansky and Niklas Wittenberg.

____________
Footnotes:
* Menippean satire is one of the earliest genres of fantastic literature. Petronius's Satyricon, Varro's Bimarcus & Lucian's Strange Story are examples of writings of this genre which had representative works from ancient Christian-, Byzantine-, Medieval-, Renaissance- and Reformation periods. Jackson, in Fantasy, the literature of subversion (1981 - Methuen) describes the genre:

Steve Bandoma, The players,2010

It was a genre which broke the demands of historical realism or probability. The Menippea moved easily in space between this world, an underworld and an upper world. It conflated past, present and future, and allowed dialogues with the dead. States of hallucination, dream, insanity, eccentric behaviour and speech, personal transformation, extraordinary situations, were the norm. It was a genre which did not claim to be definitive or knowing, Lacking finality, it interrogated authoritive truths and replaced them with something less certain (15-16).

** Populist fantasy refers to the iconography of fantasy paperback illustration, subcultures of amateur practitioners, and its often tired tropes based on medievalist and Celtic mythology.

Open studio

Steve Bandoma

OPEN STUDIO
Facilitated by Contemporary African Art Connect
Friday 30th July 2010
At 18h00
On 18 Roeland street, Cape Town
(Old Ogilvy Building)
Ref: Parliament main entrance
(Parking available also inside)

Focus10

After premiering in 2009 FOCUS is ready to launch its second edition. FOCUS10 is designed to present and connect the vibrant African art scene to the world. Conceived as a complement to Art Basel (June 16-20, 2010), the fair showcases Galerie Peter Herrmann (Berlin) and features emerging and established artists from Africa and the Diaspora in a show curated by Christine Eyene (London) and Lerato Bereng (Johannesburg) and supported by Fondation Blachère (Apt) and Pro Helvetia Cape Town. In a relaxed and intimate atmosphere visitors of FOCUS10 can expect to enjoy a huge variety of artistic production from the diverse scenes of the African continent and from the African Diaspora.

FEATURING Galerie Peter Herrmann (D):

Dalila Dalleas (Alg/D)- Amouzou Glikpa (Togo/D) - Bill Kouélany (RC) - Goddy Leye (Cam) - Malam (Cam/Fr) - George Osodi (Nig/UK) - Chéri Samba (RDC) - Ransome Stanley (D)

Curated Show
Curators: Christine Eyene (UK) - Lerato Bereng (ZA)

Steve Bandoma (DRC/ZA) - Faith47 and Rowan Phybus(ZA) - Justin Fiske (ZA) - Ricky Lee Gordon (ZA) - Bers Grandsinge (DRC/B) - Ibrahim el Hadad (ET/CH) - Victor Mukelekesha (Z/N) - Samuel Olou (RT/N) - Cameron Platter (ZA) - Frauke Stegmann (ZA) - thanksthanksafrica (CDN) - Christian Tundula (DRC/B) - Breeze Yoko (ZA)


Specials:
Chocolate Banana - a video project in a Stern-taxi touring around in Basel by Bill Kouelany and Goddy Leye. Call: 061 691 44 44
Carlo Mombelli and the Prisoners of Strange (European Edition) – Jazz concert on Thursday, June 17, 2010, 8 p.m.

For further details please refer to our homepage: www.focus10.ch.