Goodman Gallery is pleased to present “the moon is not the sun at night”, a group presentation bringing together works by artists; Carlos Garaicoa, Kendell Geers, William Kentridge, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Kapwani Kiwanga, Grada Kilomba, Mateo Lopez, Naama Tsabar and Sue Williamson.

The presentation takes its title from a verse in the poem, ‘The Rose’, written by American poet Ben Lerner. “the moon is not the sun at night” is an evocation to rethink beliefs and accepted knowledge(s). It is an invitation to question our initial encounters with what we perceive. By blatantly stating what is “known” (that the moon is not the sun), an element of doubt is cast on our awareness, allowing a process through which known facts can be questioned, falsified or even made true again. Through varying methods of opposition works in the exhibition challenge accepted frames of reference. At first glance, Tsabar’s work appears as paintings or drawings but through closer observation, they reveal themselves to be intricate sound pieces that contradict their natural character. For Nhlengethwa, the sonic and the visual travel
alongside each other, influencing and affecting each other. In Garaicoa’s work, history and memory are intermingled to suggest ways in which truth and fiction can become conflated.

Re-memory is threaded onto the image where tree structures turn into spectral structures — they are there but also not there. Similarly, Neshat considers the historical alongside the contemporary by examining the complexities of women’s identities, both through their personal and public lives. While Kiwanga draws attention to the manner in which architecture is constructed to regulate behaviour and restrict spatial freedom, Kia Henda tests the limits of freedom (and by extension confinement) by pointing to the absurdity of restrictions on the movement of people — which fail against other species. Lopez’ ‘Sillas Núcleo (two chairs)’ straddles both activation and functionality, offering audiences a gesture of hospitality - the ability to sit and rest - alongside a visual experience. For Masamvu and Hlobo, the process of transfiguration (the figure into abstraction or found objects into new materials) allows for a deeper engagement with methods of making. Both Kilomba and Geers, reach into the chambers of history to excavate colonial legacies of fetishisation, plunder and death. Kentridge and Williamson offer us models of how to reflect on history’s untranslatability — suggesting multiple ways in which multiple mediums (postcards and the opera) can be reinterpreted and reread.

Kendell Geers’ series of bronze sculptures Flesh of the Spirit, is a commentary and interpretation on the fetishisation of African objects. As a white South African artist, Geers questions how recent history has constructed African identity through apartheid and the post apartheid period. Reworking these fetishised objects into bronze sculpture, Geers suggests some of the vanity and status the ‘primitive’ has cultivated in Western culture. Geers has always worked closely with his roots as an African artist in an exorcism of identity, throwing his white African roots up against the wall of sociopolitical interrogation. Being both white and African, an artist living in exile, a freedom fighter who grew up in struggle against Apartheid, his work is difficult to define in singular terms, always layered with contradiction and contrast. For Geers, the most pressing issue that art faces today is the reanimation of spirit, to return art to its spiritual function, the intercessor between worlds. Artists, shamans and priests have been drawn to the spiritual and healing properties of resins in their work. The natural resins like Myrrh and Oliban (Frankincense) favored by the ancients have since given way to synthetic resins as the needs of industrialization and global consumption have eclipsed the need to respect our environment.

“Like water slipping through my fingers, my art is about and materializing spirit." - Kendell Geers