Kate Gottgens; South African 1965-; Dead Man'S Float, 2017
Provenance :
Exhibited : SMAC, Cape Town, Tired from Smiling, 22 November 2017 to 27 January 2018.
Literature : Sean O'Toole (2017) Kate Gottgens: Paintings 2015 - 2017, Cape Town: SMAC, illustrated in colour on page 41.
Notes : Kate Gottgens forms part of a new vanguard of admired women painters who, over the past decade, have revolutionised South African painting. A perceptive colourist who continually evolves her palette, she moves with enviable confidence between the representational and the abstract. Her style shares affinities with Gerhard Richter's photo paintings of the 1960s; like Richter, Gottgens destabilises her source images " often found photographs " by liquefying, hazing, and subtly altering their colour. This transformative approach to image-making informs the present lot, a work based on a scene the artist photographed in the Cape Town suburb of Plumstead. A laconic painter, Gottgens does not lavishly describe details or flesh out scenes. The rudimentary tree flanking the sailboat in the present lot is topped with spray-painted green foliage. When she paints figures, she is similarly economical, offering only the basic architecture of gendered bodies. Faces are often left incomplete, evoking a haunting sense of anonymity and distance. Andrew Putter (2008) Kate Gottgens at João Ferreira, Artthrob, Issue 136, online, accessed 25 July 2022.
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