Drawing for the opera The Magic Flute 2004–2005 William Kentridge Charcoal, pastel, and colored...

The exhibition "William Kentridge, Five Themes", opening July 28th, brings together some forty pieces, many of them made since 2000. It demonstrates the variety of Kentridge's output, which ranges across such media as drawing, film, collage, prints, sculpture and stage sets. His longstanding interest in theatre - he was a cofounder of Johannesburg's Junction Avenue Theatre Company in the 1970s, and since then has collaborated on several occasions with the Handspring Puppet Company - is reflected in the dramatic and even dramaturgical quality of his work. Kentridge is one of the few artists active today capable of connecting the visual arts, cinema and the performing arts. He does not so much alternate between these disciplines as shift fluently around them, going from theatre to drawing and from drawing to film. Naturally, his work echoes the South African experience, but it also draws on a wide variety of European sources, notably in literature, opera, theatre and early cinema, from which he takes the inspiration for the archetypal characters in his narratives. These figures embody and act out a complex universe in which the forces of good and evil are complementary and inseparable.

The Louvre

In parallel to the artist's monograph show at Jeu de Paume, his drawings will show in the salle d'actualité of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Louvre, in juxtaposition with a selection of drawings from the museum's permanent collection. A video conceived specially for the museum, and based on the works in this exhibition, will be shown in room 26 of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities. The theme of Ancient Egypt came into Kentridge's art when he was working on his production of the opera The Magic Flute. At this time he designed a Baroque theatre and projected his black-and-white animation films as a backdrop. Motifs he used included the exotic landscapes of the Nile, the ruined temples and the obelisks. The figure of the falcon-god Horus serves as the artist's double, appearing and disappearing by the magic of drawing. Kentridge's production premiered in Brussels in 2005. As a guest at the Louvre, Kentridge is once again evoking the world of Ancient Egypt, but also Napoleon's military expedition to the Nile at the end of the eighteenth century.

For more details for exhibition at the Jeu de paume click here:

Published 14.07.2010