Multi-award winning painter Blessing Ngobeni to present solo exhibition Ntsumi Ya Vutomi at Standard Bank Gallery

This exhibition which investigates the purpose in the human experience comes on the back of winning the Standard Bank Young Artist (Visual Art) Award in 2020.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

Standard Bank Young Artist award winner for 2020, in the category of visual art,  Blessing Ngobeni, will now eventually have an opportunity to have a solo physical exhibition at Standard Bank Gallery. This is after the opportunity to do so in 2020 as per the award tradition was scuppered by the outbreak of the global pandemic, Covid-19 in that year.

Instead of having a solo exhibition that gives artists the prestige of having visitors visit the exhibition in person during its run, Ngobeni’s solo exhibition was rather virtual. While that gave the artist the advantage of a potentially global audience during the online National Arts Festival, that platform however had its own limitations, such as technical glitches that came with having to put the whole National Arts Festival programme online, for the first time, within a limited space of time.

That presented immense challenges for the festival and therefore, affected programming. I remember very well how I struggled to view some of the shows because of technical glitches, and ended up having to give up. The decision was brave though, as it meant that we were still able to watch the festival and actually enjoyed some of the events, including Ngobeni’s exhibition from the safety and comfort of our homes.

However the decision by the Standard Bank Gallery to organise a solo exhibition for Ngobeni in which visitors can view his latest artworks in the gallery is commendable. This should give relief to those who could not view his 2020 virtual solo exhibition for one reason or another.

“Standard Bank Gallery is proud to present Ntsumi Ya Vutomi, a solo exhibition of recent work by Blessing Ngobeni. Picking up where he left off with his voluminous Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for visual arts exhibition, Chaotic Pleasure (2020), with Ntsumi Ya Vutomi, Blessing Ngobeni takes only the best elements to evolve a style that is more lyrical than in previous years.

His work often responds to a reluctance to confront the brutality of black life, a subject that has been Ngobeni’s focus since his early days as a professional artist. Ngobeni’s belief in art as a transformative tool emerges from his recognition of how inseparable political consciousness is from one’s lived experience. Having experienced a difficult childhood that has included homelessness and, later, incarceration, Ngobeni took to art in prison, witnessing the humanity it brought to the lives of fellow inmates. From there he joined the Tsoga (Wake Up) Art Workshops and later on went on to study printmaking at Artist Proof Studio,” says the gallery in a statement.

Ngobeni’s building blocks of his visual language, for example, in particular his knack for mixed-media collage, emerge from his early struggles with affording a steady supply of work materials. This fact of circumstance, his continuing hypervigilance about his surroundings and his increasing grounding in post-colonial theory have all combined to create a style that is accessible, allusive and constantly breaking its own limits.

This exhibition showcases Ngobeni’s expansive skill set, in particular his ability to work across a vast array of materials, figuration styles, and formats. The exhibition features paintings, sculptures, installations, and video animations, setting up the expectation for a show bursting at the seams. However, the artist has opted to satiate rather than overwhelm would-be visitors to the Standard Bank Gallery.

Using his 2020 SBYA virtual exhibition Chaotic Pleasure as a departure point, Ngobeni continues to explore the all-encompassing violence of the post-colony and its impact on black lives while experimenting with varied compositional techniques and materials. “I’m working with the experiences that one goes through,” he says, “examining the circumstances that allow others to learn and grow, while others feel discouraged to do things. It is a way of reflecting while looking forward.”

Ngobeni has never shied away from confrontational depictions of the rapacious nature of capitalism. Of late, fur, cotton wool, and fabric have expanded Ngobeni’s storytelling palette, allowing him to expand on and delve into new narratives and visual metaphors. He points particularly to a collage titled Mirrored Soft Life, in which fabrics such as cotton and cotton wool are mined for metaphorical meaning within the context of his painterly storytelling. “I see cotton as this wound,” he says, “a representation which goes back to what I call cotton children, the slaves. The cotton becomes our inheritance, like a pain that never ends.”

Curated by Thembinkosi Goniwe alongside Nkuli Nhleko, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi is something of a survey exhibition (Ngobeni prefers to think of it as “a time-lapse”) in which viewers can expect familiar works as well as hitherto obscure series such as Skeletons at Work, in which the artist turns his familiar style of jagged figures on its head, introducing rounded, stripped-down bodies in sparse urban environs.

“It was a different way of treating my work,” says the artist of the series, which was shown for just ten days at Everard Read, Johannesburg, and was subject to positive feedback. “It was also a move away from collaging and a way of bringing the marrow of my work out into the open.”

The show evenly captures the many moods of Ngobeni; buoyant, playful, didactic (as always) but also reverential in the sense that he proudly wears his influences on his sleeves, throwing nods at the likes of Dumile Feni, Gerard Sekoto and Jean-Michel Basquiat. With the homages, the paintings are let loose from being unrelenting scenes of suffering and bondage and ushered into the realm of cross-generational collaboration. Ntsumi Ya Vutomi runs at the Standard Bank Art Gallery from 03 August to 16 September 2023.

About Blessing Ngobeni:

Blessing Ngobeni was born in the small town of Tzaneen, located in Limpopo. He moved to Johannesburg at a very young age, where he experienced many hardships, from being homeless, to serving time in prison, which he describes as “the usual South African story. “He has since built an exceptional and unique career in the South African art industry, bringing with him a unique style and a critique of political regimes. Ngobeni made the corruption, incompetence, and duplicity of the current South African ruling elite the subjects of his art. He tackles the disconcerting consequences of betraying democratic ideals, the failure to learn from historical tragedies and the expanding gap between the rich and poor. This critique is informed by Ngobeni’s own experience, the hardships, and challenges he had to confront as a child and adolescent. As a result of his exceptional work and dedication to his practice, Ngobeni received the highly prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award for visual Arts in 2020.

Exhibition details

The exhibition opens to the public on the 3rd August – 16 September 2023. The Standard Bank Gallery is located on the corner of Simmonds and Frederick streets in central Johannesburg, and offers free, safe undercover parking on the corner of Harrison and Frederick streets.

Gallery hours: Monday-Friday: from 8am to 4.30pm