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GALLERIES: Something new sets tone for aspects of humanity

Wednesday December 02 2020
"Mask" by Franklyn Dzingai.

"Mask" by Franklyn Dzingai. PHOTO | FRANK WHALLEY

By FRANK WHALLEY

As Pliny the Elder famously wrote, “There’s always something new out of Africa” … so I was not at all surprised when I came across an artist whose work I had never seen before — not surprised but certainly delighted.

The artist is the Zimbabwean Franklyn Dzingai, now in his early 30s and making a name for himself as a printmaker. I found his work, a single print of a woman, in the exhibition Faces at the Red Hill Art Gallery to the west of Nairobi.

It had been shown around a year ago at Nairobi’s Circle Art Gallery, but for some reason I must have missed it there.

With 22 other portraits and figure paintings by 12 artists currently at Red Hill — mostly acrylics but with a couple of welcome oils (take ages to dry but so much richer) — Dzingai’s Mask, is a vivid multi-coloured piece that holds its own on the wall even when hung next to a couple of vibrant pastel drawings by the South African Charles Sekano.

Dzingai was trained at Zimbabwe’s National Gallery Visual Art Studio in Harare, where he specialised in printmaking and is inspired by family photos and images from popular media.

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Sekano offers two untitled pieces; one with four women wearing hats and the other featuring seven heads (and counting) interlaced like a How Many? Puzzle in a children’s colouring book, presented in a range of greens highlighted by a complementary slash of red lipstick.

In fact, Dzingai and Sekano share much in common, even though at opposite ends of the age spectrum (Sekano is in his late 70s) both using strong outlines within which they play with palettes of blazing colours.

Each seems instinctively aggressive in artistic outlook and they share a determination to assault the senses with their heavy lines, strong compositions and bold areas of flat colours that create excitement on the picture plane.

The fact that they are hung together is a fine bit of curatorial inspiration, typical of Red Hill; a juxtaposition that invites comparison and opens up the unexpected to scrutiny. Sekano, a jazz musician and painter who lived in Nairobi from 1967-1997 is well known to gallery goers in this region; Dzingai less so.

Hopefully this exhibition will remedy that and perhaps lead to a solo show.
 Other interesting pieces included a strong double portrait by the Ugandan Geoffrey Mukasa, dark and intense and again with the faces and figures defined by line rather than tone, and a large-ish figure painting Young Woman in Grey from 2001, by Pilkington Ssengendo, head of the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts at Makerere University from 1992-2003.

Study never ends for the best artists and the late Prof Ssengendo was a case in point, being awarded his doctorate in fine arts after he had retired and shortly before he had turned 70.

The international line-up continues with three heads on boards, by El Tayeb Dawalbeit, reflecting the grandeur of Nubian ancestor figures and scratched and gouged into the painted surface. There is a quiet majesty about them that is commanding.

Fitsum Berhe Woldelibanos contributes three acrylic portraits, one of which is a poignant study of the Ethiopian boy prince Alemayehu who was taken to England for safety in 1863, became a favourite of Queen Victoria and died of pleurisy aged only 18 in 1879.

He was buried in the grounds of Windsor Castle.

A carved stone head by the Zimbabwean Antony Makurirofa is typical of its kind; smooth, polished and rather bland but, its admirers claim, possessed of a certain nobility.

It is the only sculpture in this show.

From Kenya a sentimentally mournful figure by Sebastian Kiarie competes with the Surreal stillness of a wide-eyed woman in a shawl by Richard Kimathi while Samuel Githinji adds spice to the wall with two furiously Expressionist portraits.

A vertical triptych of three heads with directional arrows (why?) by the Sudanese Salah Elmur and five faces painted on maps (again, why?) by the Egyptian Souad Abdelrassoul complete the line-up.

As themed exhibitions go, Faces (until the end of this year) is an engaging idea and from the wild Sekanos and Dzingai to the imperturbable calm of the Kimathi there is a wide range of expressions and emotions to see. And in spite of being limited by space and resources, gallery owners Hellmuth and Erica Musch-Rossler have offered a glimpse into one of the really big staples of art history and as a fascinating primer this exhibition stands up well.


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