PRESS RELEASE
Justin Orvis Steimer & Terrence Musekiwa
‘The Watchers’
PRIVATE VIEW: July 03rd, 2018 6 – 8.30 pm
EXHIBITION: July 4th - July 28th 2018
50 Golborne is delighted to present ‘The Watchers’, an exhibition by Terrence Musekiwa (based in Harare (Zimbabwe) and Justin Orvis Steimer (based in Brooklyn, USA) for the first time in the UK. For this occasion the two artists have resumed the artistic dialogue that they first started in Harare (Zimbabwe) in 2017 for the launch of Catinca Tabaracu Harare.
Both artist attempt to channel the divine, the metaphysical, the ancestors of spaces through line, paint, stone, and materials long ago discarded or forgotten.
Musekiwa lends power and movement to obsolete materials. With bare hands and simple tools - the hammer, the chisel, a saw - he gives life and humour to brooms, forks, and helmets. With the skillful hands of several generations of Shona sculptors, he transforms stone into being, laboriously shaping its form, sometimes taking several months to finish one sculpture. He exists on the margins of past and present, traditional and contemporary, the physical world and the invisible spirits, order, and disorder; trying to find balance between opposite forces - the place where opposites meet; the shape that meeting takes.
Steimerstarts with the spirit. With freehand lines and forms, he transposes space, time, and sound to offer a channelled truth. His paintings depict a series of responses to invisible sources that have been excluded from scientific versions of reality. He makes canvases from materials found or gifted; the pre-existing color, texture, and geometry affecting the finished result as much as his hand and paint. His work speaks to our souls more efficiently than to our minds.
ABOUT Terrence Musekiwa
Terrence Musekiwa comes from a long line of sculptors. He started carving stone at the age of five, at first helping his father and later moving away from traditional aesthetics. He breaks the divide between traditional and contemporary. While each work begins with the familiar toil of shaping the stone, works are then fused with a myriad of found and industrial objects including chains, plastics, glue, and resin. His visual language wrestles with convention to simultaneously challenge and pay homage to Zimbabwean tradition. His conceptual vernacular introduces a dialogue about present- day Zimbabwe, its mechanics, politics, micro and macro trade systems, hardships and a quality of magic that permeates the personal lives of its inhabitants.
Musekiwa studied at The School of The National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2013) and completed two art residencies in 2016: Tiroche DeLeon in Tel Aviv, and CTG(R): Newfoundland in Canada with the CTG Collective. In 2017 he mounted his first solo show at Catinca Tabacaru NY, and the inaugural two-artist exhibition at Catinca Tabacaru HARARE. In 2018 he will be an Artist In Residence at OMI New York. His work has been exhibited and collected internationally, with his first institutional inclusion in 2016 at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
ABOUT Justin Orvis Steimer
Justin Orvis Steimer’s work has been developed as a series of responses to invisible sources that have been excluded from scientific versions of reality. With freehand lines and forms he transposes space, time, sound and presence to offer a channeled truth. He makes canvases from materials found in the places he renders, or given to him by the subjects of his portraits; the pre- existing color, texture and geometry affecting the finished result.
He often collaborates with practitioners from different fields such as musicians, astronomers, shamans, or other artists who contribute to determine the identity of each work.
Steimer earned his BFA in painting from the University of Colorado (2004). Catinca Tabacaru opened her New York program with Steimer’s first solo exhibition (2014). His work has been included in the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s New Wave exhibition (2015), in Zig Zag Zim at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2016), and the inaugural two-artist exhibition at Catinca Tabacaru HARARE. Steimer is a co-founder of the CTG Collective.