Walking the perimeter of what was the tent, it becomes increasingly hard to understand why it was so necessary to erect it. Was it because of these strange late summer rains, or maybe to block out the sun? I couldn’t imagine we could truly believe it would somehow summon a greater understanding of ourselves. It had no roof but a pitch, its brackets held back no water, only a faint set of unaccounted for events imprinted on the ground. We are left pulling up the floor together with the curtains. You kneel, you bow while I stare astonished; but you could now cross the lines to read this current moment better: How to enter the first heaven, which is this place, yet has traveled somewhere else.
In this collaborative exhibition, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt and Blake Daniels present a new body of paintings, drawings and sculptural installations that reconstruct the intimate moments shared under a collapsing church tent outside their studio in Johannesburg. Each artist engages this collapsible and migratory border between what is holy and what is not, with a genuine pursuit of reconfiguring an undocumented history, each one out of sync with the each other. Kreutzfeldt works with the spatial association and structure of the tent, beginning with its movements, remnants and the ground it leaves behind. Daniels’s paintings tell stories of the tent; tales of murdered deities, sexual ceremony hidden from public view, or which a taboo love is drowned in baptism.
The title of the exhibition refers to the writings of Naguib Mahfouz in which he describes the space between earth and the heavens as a new city which is brilliantly illuminated, but without a sun. The City Without a Sun becomes a picture, an interior landscape, an old sticker pulled off the faded wall, in the shape of a tent. It is full of small moments and lesser events, often simple and benign, sometimes profound and marvellous.
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Blake Daniels (b. 1990, Cincinnati, USA) is currently living and working between New York, USA and Johannesburg, ZA. He is the recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his Masters in Fine Arts through the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. His paintings visualize moments of intimacy with history, both lived and remembered, depicting bodies and landscapes which are constantly being altered, dislocated and fragmented through their internalization of the socially built histories they experience. Reconfiguring figure and ground relationships, Daniels weaves tales of love remembered and times forgotten, never allowing a definitive line to be establish between abstraction and figuration. Daniels was included in the critical survey 100 Painters of Tomorrow published through Thames & Hudson, and has exhibited internationally at Beers London, London, UK; Room, Johannesburg, ZA; Canwood Gallery, Herefordshire, UK; Sullivan Gallery, Chicago, USA; Monfai Arts Centre, Chiang Mai, THA; Fresh Exhibitions, Savannah, USA and Challery, Vienna, AUT.
Dorothee Kreutzfeldt (b.1970, Windhoek, Namibia) is based in Johannesburg. Her interest in urban structures and their embedded socio-political histories and imaginations have informed her paintings, research and collaborations over the last twenty years. The city of Johannesburg has played a central role in her life and work, and continues to anchor questions around how the city crafts, undermines and explodes the experiences of time, space and subjectivity. Previous solo shows include Extensions to the Lot Line (2017); At Present, (2015); and The Immanent Inauguration of the 5th Corner (2010) at blank projects, and HERE WE (2016) at Room Gallery & Projects in Johannesburg. In 2013 she co-authored the book Not No Place, Johannesburg: Fragments of Spaces and Times with Bettina Malcomess. Concurrent to her artistic practice and travels, Kreutzfeldt lectures at the Wits School of Arts where she is working towards a PhD.
In this collaborative exhibition, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt and Blake Daniels present a new body of paintings, drawings and sculptural installations that reconstruct the intimate moments shared under a collapsing church tent outside their studio in Johannesburg. Each artist engages this collapsible and migratory border between what is holy and what is not, with a genuine pursuit of reconfiguring an undocumented history, each one out of sync with the each other. Kreutzfeldt works with the spatial association and structure of the tent, beginning with its movements, remnants and the ground it leaves behind. Daniels’s paintings tell stories of the tent; tales of murdered deities, sexual ceremony hidden from public view, or which a taboo love is drowned in baptism.
The title of the exhibition refers to the writings of Naguib Mahfouz in which he describes the space between earth and the heavens as a new city which is brilliantly illuminated, but without a sun. The City Without a Sun becomes a picture, an interior landscape, an old sticker pulled off the faded wall, in the shape of a tent. It is full of small moments and lesser events, often simple and benign, sometimes profound and marvellous.
—
Blake Daniels (b. 1990, Cincinnati, USA) is currently living and working between New York, USA and Johannesburg, ZA. He is the recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his Masters in Fine Arts through the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. His paintings visualize moments of intimacy with history, both lived and remembered, depicting bodies and landscapes which are constantly being altered, dislocated and fragmented through their internalization of the socially built histories they experience. Reconfiguring figure and ground relationships, Daniels weaves tales of love remembered and times forgotten, never allowing a definitive line to be establish between abstraction and figuration. Daniels was included in the critical survey 100 Painters of Tomorrow published through Thames & Hudson, and has exhibited internationally at Beers London, London, UK; Room, Johannesburg, ZA; Canwood Gallery, Herefordshire, UK; Sullivan Gallery, Chicago, USA; Monfai Arts Centre, Chiang Mai, THA; Fresh Exhibitions, Savannah, USA and Challery, Vienna, AUT.
Dorothee Kreutzfeldt (b.1970, Windhoek, Namibia) is based in Johannesburg. Her interest in urban structures and their embedded socio-political histories and imaginations have informed her paintings, research and collaborations over the last twenty years. The city of Johannesburg has played a central role in her life and work, and continues to anchor questions around how the city crafts, undermines and explodes the experiences of time, space and subjectivity. Previous solo shows include Extensions to the Lot Line (2017); At Present, (2015); and The Immanent Inauguration of the 5th Corner (2010) at blank projects, and HERE WE (2016) at Room Gallery & Projects in Johannesburg. In 2013 she co-authored the book Not No Place, Johannesburg: Fragments of Spaces and Times with Bettina Malcomess. Concurrent to her artistic practice and travels, Kreutzfeldt lectures at the Wits School of Arts where she is working towards a PhD.
