TRADE-OFF / BEYOND BORDERS

Deepest Darkest Gallery CT Feb 12 – 22 March

www.deepestdarkestart.com

In addition to our Investec Cape Town Art Fair debut with award-winning lens artist Barry Salzman’s dual projects The Way We See the World and The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim on view at Booth A6, Deepest Darkest is proud to present the next instalment of our exciting 2022 gallery programme, Trade Off by AD-Reflex, and Beyond Borders by Nyambo Masamara on view at the gallery.

Trade-Off, AD-Reflex’s third showing at Deepest Darkest centres on Agbogbloshie, a major hub for e-waste dumping and ‘recycling’ on the outskirts of central Accra, Ghana. The primarily informal practise sees these ‘recyclers’ manually burning plastic carcases to extract profitable metals, such as copper and wires. While crucial to their livelihoods, the significant impact on both the health and environment for both the recylcers themselves and the surrounding informal settlements are a constant and real threat. Soil and water in the surrounding area indicate the presence of toxic contaminants such as arsenic, lead and mercury. With over 50 million tonnes of e-waste produced every year, its management remains an inherently global issue, inequitably addressed.

The works are a whole ‘palimpsest’ of human effort and history. In ancient Greece, a ‘palimpsest’ was a parchment written upon twice, provoking the idea of vanishing words, memories, and stories, and implying a process of layering and retrieving. ADReflex’s entire sensibility appears to be stretched between irreconcilable extremes. In their hands, history and fact, beauty and despair, turn out to be disturbingly malleable and imprecise. They draw on diverse sources that might provide the mythical structure to underpin their imagery, from the recycling efforts in Agbogbloshie, Greek mythology, Caravaggio, Francis Bacon and Twenty First Century technologies, all co-exist freely, and are in perpetual transformation. The ‘palimpsest’ speaks to a cohabitation of seemingly alien narratives folding and unfolding in dialogue, disclosing a state of duality, where we feel both aware and unaware, empowered and disempowered.

Through extensive layering, their work borders on the ‘alchemical’ where no clear distinction can be drawn between the painterly and the digital. Painting clashes with technology in the form of 3D-modelling,

Trade-Off 2020 AD-Reflex Oil, 3D Modeling &Digital Collage on Archival Paper on Board 150 x 280 cm

digital collage, and digital photo manipulation techniques on print and DIASEC, to form a distinctly new visual language that is resolutely grounded in the ‘here’ and ‘now’.

Award-winning artist duo, AD-Reflex, was formed in 2015 and consists of contemporary South African artists Johan Conradie and Karl Gustav Sevenster. Notable awards and recognitions include The Artbox Project Basil 1.0 (Switzerland, 2017), Alchemical Beasts – Solo Presentation at Miami Art Fair (Miami, 2018), Re:Artiste - Show Your World: Competition Winner (New York, 2018), London Contemporary Art Prize: Finalist (London, 2018), F the Art World: Fine Art / Mixed Media Competition Winner (New York, 2018).

The Traveler, 2021, Nyambo Masamara Archival Print on Satin Giclee, 59.4 x 84.1 cm

Above: The Promise, 2021, Nyambo Masamara, Archival print on Satin Giclee, 59.4 x 84.1 cm Opposite Page: Dollars & Cents, 2021, AD-Reflex Oil, 3D Modeling & Digital Collage on Archival paper on Diasec, 200 x 150 cm

The Seer, 2021, Nyambo Masamara Archival Print on Satin Giclee 59.4 x 84.1cm

Beyond Borders, is the debut show of Nyambo Masamara at Deepest Darkest. The Rwandanborn multidisciplinary artist and designer currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. He describes the series of photographs and altered found object sculptural works as “The embodiment of the Traveling Spirit”.

It is the depiction of displacement; ever unsettled, in search of a world that is ready to receive the message it carries. The message of harmony between the past and present. It has moved beyond borders to find belonging and in the process is learning that it lies within. As it travels between space and time it is weighted by its calling to connect this message to a collective that will listen.

Trade-Off / Beyond Borders On View Tues – Sat, 12pm – 4pm. Extended Hours from Thurs 17 Feb – Sun 20 Feb: 10am – 6pm info@deepestdarkestart.com