Opening Reception: May 3, 2012, 6-8 pm
David Krut Projects is pleased to present Reap and Sow, Diane Victor’s second solo show with the gallery. The exhibition consists of ash and smoke drawings on paper and glass, along with new editions made in collaboration with various print workshops during her recent two-month residency in New York City.
These prints expand on Victor’s recent series of drawings, “The Burdens,” which depict figures literally weighed down by masses of objects and solidified words as metaphors for societal limitations and political deception.
Renowned for her mastery of draughtsmanship and printmaking, Victor’s works are recognized for their compulsive linear detail, sharp social commentary and biting political satire. Informed by historical and mythological references, Victor’s work addresses the socio-political inequalities and mechanisms of power that exist within South Africa and across the globe. Using inherently fugitive media such as smoke and ash as tools for drawing, the works in this exhibition address universal issues of corruption, violence and human frailty: images of powerful executives responsible for America’s financial collapse in 2007, their heads stacked and falling downward; portraits of naked, aging white Afrikaans men created from the ash of burned books, and haunting portraits of slaughtered animal heads, a continuation of the series, “Brief Lives” installed on site in a butcher shop in Oudtshoorn and an abandoned slaughterhouse in Nelspruit, South Africa.
Born in Witbank, South Africa in 1964, Diane Victor received her BA Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1986. In 1988, she became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Volkskas Atelier Award. In 2010 Victor was included in the exhibition, “Impressions from South Africa 1965-Now,” curated by Judy Hecker at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2010 Victor had her first solo exhibition in New York at David Krut Projects and in 2011 Grinnell College mounted a solo exhibition of Victor’s work at Faulconer Gallery. Victor’s work is held by the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum, New York Public Library, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College, the South African National Gallery, Pretoria Art Museum and Durban Art Museum.
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