Artistic exchanges between visual artists in different countries are a time-honored tradition and may be more necessary than ever in a fractured, polarizing world obsessed with isolating policies. These exchanges reveal that the artistic impulse is universal and that talent is not reserved in one nation or peoples.
The Durón Gallery at SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) in Venice, California is hosting AT THE THRESHOLD 2024 an exchange program of artists from the United States and South Africa (the show debuted at the University of Johannesburg). Twelve artists from each country were paired with each other. Every artist made a print responding to the aesthetics and concepts presented by their artistic partner. This excellent exhibition hung the two prints, ostensibly inspired by each other together with wall text describing the experience of working with another artist’s vision from around the globe (The finished prints were signed editions on paper created from a variety of techniques – lithos, woodcuts and screen prints among them). The curated structure of the show was unambiguous – each pair of artists had work separated by a text placard investigating the work.
There were many highlights to the show, in fact it was an overwhelming portfolio of talent. Have we entered some kind of golden age of printmaking? This exhibit would not only answer in the affirmative, it underscores a global golden gale, there was no distinction in talent between the American artists and those from South Africa.
Some of the pairings had obvious influence on each other, while another subset had influences that could be inferred by the viewer pretty easily. Still others did what artists do despite “the rules” and just appeared to make their own art regardless of that presented by their collaborator across the globe… and guess what? That is alright, there was still fantastic art being made and displayed.
Karen Fiorito & Reneilwe Mathibe presented a pair of prints underscoring the spirit of influential collaboration. Fiorito composed an elegant portrait of Shirley Chisholm. Historic newsprint coverage of her career is bathed in bright red that contrasts with a stylized photo of her. The nice contrast here frames Chisholm as if in the amber of the history she created. Beneath her is an attributed quote she delivered about activism, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” Independent of the theme from the show this is a great example of an historic portrait that underscores the accomplishments of someone while portraying the subject with the strong dignity she embodied. The collaboration here was everything to which the stated goal of the show aspired.
Reneilwe Mathibe took some inspiration from Fiorito’s portrait, repeating the quotation about the folding chair at the base of an optimistic image. “There IS good news everywhere” is a clipped newspaper headline, and we are left wondering if Mathibe echoed Fiorito’s background or was the primary influence for it. Not that it matters in the end when two artists create interesting images that share some formal choices. The “Good News” image presents an anthropomorphic form heralding the good news that is then magnified moving toward the background in the composition. The effect of this is an implied progress onward, deeper into the future, an apparently optimistic one.
Eddy A. Lopez & Lucas Nkgweng each produced prints that involved a formal layering process combined with a conceptual commitment to political progress. From this point though they create two radically different artworks. Lopez Layered fifty images of ballots from each state in the country. The finished print is a literal delivery of everything everywhere all at once. The inherent completeness of the image is what creates its dissonance, a wonderful meditation on the uncontrollable nature of democracy itself.
Nkgweng’s work shares the notion of political discussion influencing his art but is more aligned with abstract mark making traditions. His finished piece spells out the word “Vote” in a frenzied antithesis to calligraphy. Wild gestures carry the energy of a billion political campaigns in his pictorial space, an energetic rendering that balances between the physical and the conceptual and much as the Lopez work is a rendering of conceptual rigor as tangible reality.
Katherine Sheehan & Lebohang Motaung were a duo in this project that created individual masterpieces despite not particularly surrendering to the states AT THE THRESHOLD parameters. In the presence of interesting art, though, who cares? Sheehan renders a foreboding (dare I say ugly) bird atop a dumpster fire, fearless of being barbecued. The sinister posture and vibe of this fine feathered frenemy underscores the nature of the colloquial “Dumpster Fire” expression. When we are “at the threshold” is it not because there are dumpster fires out there?
Motaung contributed a delightfully poetic portrait of a black woman blossoming into her own power. The contemporary reality of enjoying everything South Africans fought for pulsates throughout her print. To see such an expression of joy as a result of the political process is heartening, inspiring even. Of course, the fact that the American artist rendered a dumpster fire and the South African artist portrayed optimism as a blooming flower may say more about the individual threshold facing these two nations.
AT THE THRESHOLD was curated by Marianne Sadowski and Karen Fiorito with the help of SPARC’s Rio Diaz. In and of itself it is a great show – I could have highlighted any of the other pairings presented, many featured world-class printing techniques and all were engaging meditations on the world today rendered with an acuity to the universality of struggle and victory. On a broader scale, from my American perspective, I would hope efforts like this show would inspire artists to embrace exchanging energy on an international stage in the face of what appears to be a rising tide of isolationist politicking.
The exhibit runs thru May 2, 2025. All photos by the author with apologies for the occasional glare in the images.
