SIMPHIWE NDZUBE
South African artist Simphiwe Ndzube received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Ndzube’s work is characterised by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of black experience in post-apartheid South Africa.
Through painting, sculpture and spatial intervention, Ndzube stages an introduction to his imaginative universe, named Echoes of the First Stories. He states, "We begin in the real world and through interaction with the work enter a fabulist tale in progress. I’ve attempted to create the genesis of a cosmology that finds itself in the “uncharted lands and trackless seas” I call the Mine Moon. It emerges from the tradition of magical realism and is expanding to points currently unknown."
Narrative influences span Ben Okri, Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Hieronymus Bosch, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Gabriel García Márquez and Zakes Mda. In particular Ndzube highlights Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community by Wendy B Faris and Lois Parkinson Zamora which describes magical realism as "a mode suited to exploring – and transgressing – boundaries, whether the boundaries are ontological, political, geographical or generic. [It] facilitates the fusion, or coexistence, of possible worlds, spaces, systems that would be irreconcilable in other modes."
Recent exhibitions include Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, The 15th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2019); People, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA (2019); Uncharted Lands and Trackless Seas, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2019, solo); Trans World, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA; Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2019); New Acquisitions, the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA (2018); Hacer Noche, Oaxaca, Mexico (2018); NOISE!, The Frans Hals Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2018); Waiting for Mulungu, The CC Foundation, Shanghai (2018); Bharbarosi, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2017, solo); and Becoming, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, South Africa (2016, solo).
Ndzube works and lives in Los Angeles, CA and Cape Town, South Africa.