Collection: 'In Conversation: Mary Visser and Sibusiso Ngwazi' - Mary Visser & Sibusiso Ngwazi

EBONY/CURATED Cape Town presents a curatorial conversation on abstraction, inspired by the juxtaposition of two contemporary South African abstract artists: Mary Visser and Sibusiso Ngwazi.

This exhibition acts as a looking glass, bringing into focus two artists who view abstraction through different lenses. Despite no link in their artistic journeys and backgrounds, both artists use unpredictability in their process and a lack of an obvious formula to create works of expressive visual freedom. There is an illusion in these abstracted paintings that questions the viewer who might search for a comfortable focal point. It’s not there, as both Visser and Ngwazi use colour, movement and spontaneity to create compelling compositions which seek to surprise, redefine, and question our focus.

Mary Visser (1971- ) was born near Cape Town, and studied painting at Rhodes University which was followed some 20 years later by a Postgraduate Diploma undertaken at Michaelis School of Fine Art. Visser finds inspiration in the City of Cape Town and invented spaces. Our historical human imprint visible within the urban landscape using roads, street signs, graffiti and architecture allows her to experiment and form connections in her studio by looking at objects, drawings and different surfaces. Her paintings are investigations of these observations which the artist views as layered forms and lines created using a collage-like process.

“I seek a way through the recognisable view to locate something beyond the image and beneath the surface; a flash of movement in the stillness of a buildings' facade, a life lived" - Mary Visser

Sibusiso Ngwazi (1999 -) is a self-taught artist born in Kwazulu Natal and now lives and works in Cape Town. Painting since 2013, Ngwazi’s works are grounded in abstraction and spirituality, breaking free from traditional representational art. Ngwazi uses movement, imperfections, and raw emotion to convey a sense of transcendence through the use of complex and multi-dimensional compositions with bold, and vibrant colours.

“He refuses a point, a control, surprises the eye with uncanny congregations of colour-line-energy. At the same time, they can still the mind, arrive at some inscrutable grace. Ngwazi’s paintings are pagan, animistic, wild, dystopian. One relishes, wonders. There is rarely a moment, I imagine, that the artist doubts himself. If he has freed himself and the viewer from over-assertion, he has also freed himself and the viewer of any latent anxiety” - Ashraf Jamal for Artthrob