Misheck Masamvu | Goodman Gallery Cape Town

Goodman Gallery presents Safety Pin, an exhibition of new paintings and a sculptural installation by Misheck Masamvu. The artist combines striking colour with a distinct expressionist style to create tumultuous landscapes, representing the confessional vulnerability that lies at the heart of his practice. 

Safety Pin uses intergenerational relationships as the primary source with an emphasis on maternal links. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, the exhibition also addresses the past while searching for a way of being present - with dignity - in this world. 

This exhibition leans towards abstraction formed through frenetic mark-making through which the artist works through his fears, anxieties and dreams. The title is suggestive of a precarious holding together all of the feelings, thoughts and reflections that feed the work. 

Layered painted surfaces and brushstrokes exist as remnants of the physical act of painting and give the sense that multiple temporalities have been embedded within each image. The irregular, erratic swipes of paint and chaotic compositions mimic the artist’s desire to let emotions manifest without being expressed through recognisable forms. In this way the scenes that appear on canvas collectively become confessional expressions, in turn allowing viewers to access their own vulnerabilities.

Misheck Masamvu’s (b. 1980, Mutare, Zimbabwe) practice - encompassing drawing, painting and sculpture - explores the socio-political setting of post-independence Zimbabwe and draws attention to the impact of economic policies that sustain political mayhem. 

Solo exhibitions: Talk to me while I’m eating, Goodman Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2021); Misheck Masamvu, Institut Français, Paris, France (2015); Disputed Seats, Influx Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal (2009). 

Group exhibitions: Inside Out, Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva, Switzerland (2022); Witness: Afro Perspectives, El Espacio 23, Miami, USA (2020); Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, USA (2020); Two Together, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); Five Bobh: Painting at the End of an Era, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2017); Africa 2.0 > is there a Contemporary African art?, Influx Contemporary Art, Lisbon (2010); Art, Migration and Identity, Africa Museum, Arnhem (2008); and 696, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2008). 

International exhibitions: The ‘t’ is silent, 8th Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium (2022);  STILL ALIVE, 5th Aichi Triennale, Aichi, Japan (2022), NIRIN, 22nd Sydney Biennale, Sydney, Australia (2020), the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016) and his international debut at Zimbabwe’s inaugural Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011)

Collections: A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; Braunsfelder Family Collection, Cologne, Germany; Uieshema Collection, Tokyo, Japan; Perez Art Museum, Miami, USA; Pigozzi Collection, Geneva, Switzerland; Taguchi Art Collection, Tokyo, Japan; Fukutake Foundation, Auckland, New Zealand; Comma Foundation (Damme, Belgium); ANA Collection; Lagos, Nigeria; Sigg Art Foundation, Le Castellet, France; Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva, Switzerland; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa. 

Masamvu studied at Atelier Delta and Kunste Akademie in Munich. He lives and works in Harare.