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Gallery Delta runs Revamped Annual Summer Exibition

Life & Style
Gallery Delta started the New Year by opening the currently running Revamped Annual Summer Exhibition which will show until end of the month. Curated by Helen Lieros, the exhibition consists of works by 25 local and young artists, who had been exhibiting with the gallery throughout last year. Their works include paintings, graphics, sculptures, ceramics […]

Gallery Delta started the New Year by opening the currently running Revamped Annual Summer Exhibition which will show until end of the month.

Curated by Helen Lieros, the exhibition consists of works by 25 local and young artists, who had been exhibiting with the gallery throughout last year. Their works include paintings, graphics, sculptures, ceramics and three-dimensional objects.

Some of the outstanding works include Economia by the curator, an amazing oil on paper piece titled Women by Tafadzwa Gwetai and an untitled piece by Anthony Bumhira using acrylic on canvas.

“This exhibition has been running annually for 37 years. It’s a celebration of a new year and we always call upon our family artists to celebrate the year ended by displaying their works,” said Gallery Delta assistant director Gina Maxim.

Maxim said the works were usually selected from a number that an artist would have created the previous year.

On the other hand, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) is continuing from last year with a solo exhibition of paintings by John Kotze. The exhibition runs until mid-month.

Kotze displays 21 large and eight small oil paintings, all under the theme Abstract.

“This is Kotze’s second exhibition at the NGZ since 2005 and the works demonstrate what has been happening to him in the intervening six years since his last exhibition,” said NGZ communications officer Rutendo Mutadzapasi.

Although his theme title is Abstract, Kotze’s works are totally realistic in style; the pictures are vivid as if the only thing left is for life to be blown in the objects.

Some of his magnificent paintings include Cool Cucumbers, I Scream Spoons, Yes We Can, The Unbearable Lightness and Drumstick, among others.

“The artist seeks to explore the interplay between realism and abstraction through the use of photography as the source for recording the everyday images that surround us,” said Mutadzapasi.

She said this exploration has seen the artist adopt repetition, pattern, rhythm and complexity to question the ordinariness and banality of the elements drawn from local surroundings.

Mutadzapasi said the techniques introduced a meditative quality to the works made poignant through the formalised nature of the compositions and the large-scale paintings.

Photography is exploited for its vividness as well as its imitative power, presenting a seductiveness that involves the viewer in the interplay between the perceived illusionistic depth and the material reality of the flat-painted surface.

In the paintings on exhibition, Kotze tries to focus the viewer’s attention on the complex action of creating the painted surface as well as its illusionistic effect.