Portrait and Place — blank projects

Portrait and Place (2020) | Installation view, blank projects, Cape Town

Gregory Olympio, Chilling (2019) | Acrylic on canvas, 58 x 49 cm (framed)

Gregory Olympio, Power (2019) | Acrylic on canvas, 58 x 49 cm (framed)

Gregory Olympio, Veste rouge (2019) | Acrylic on canvas, 58 x 49 cm (framed)

Gregory Olympio, Capuche (2019) | Acrylic on canvas, 58 x 49 cm (framed)

Gregory Olympio, Femme, fond bleu (2019) | Acrylic on canvas, 46 x 38 cm (framed)

Gregory Olympio, Femme, fond rose (2019) | Acrylic on canvas, 46 x 38 cm (framed)

Simnikiwe Buhlungu, MAKING THIS UP ! WE’RE NOT (2017) | Silkscreen banner, 70 x 100 cm | Courtesy of private collection, Johannesburg

Thembinkosi Hlatswayo, Fleeting Feet from the series Slaghuis II (2019) | Digital print, 55 x 37.5 cm (framed) | Edition of 7 + 2AP

Thembinkosi Hlatswayo, Untitled XV from the series Slaghuis II (2019) | Digital print, 51 x 82.5 cm (framed) | Edition of 7 + 2AP

Thembinkosi Hlatswayo, Untitled XXVIII from the series Slaghuis II (2019) | Digital print, 60.5 x 60 cm (framed) | Edition of 7 + 2AP

blank is pleased to present Portrait and Place, a group exhibition drawing together the practices of four emerging artists: Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo, Gregory Olympio, and Natalie Paneng.

Seeking to highlight the early careers of these artists, the exhibition explores points of confluence between their practices by examining them through the lenses of portraiture and ‘placeness’. Layering Hlatshwayo’s autobiographical images, Olympio’s invented characters, Paneng’s digital dreamworld and Buhlungu’s inquiry into knowledge production, the exhibition is a montage of various conceptual modes and disciplines.

Olympio’s six painted portraits are not based on real people but rather capture an attitude or a mood. The starting point is an observation of what is around him, whether on the screen through social media or on the streets. Led by intuition, he merges what he observes with his own imagination to create images that centre around formal concerns of colour and shape. Olympio states, “I am a viewer. I remain open to what is around me. Images on social media, the outfits of people in the street etc. I try to capture an attitude, a detail, a combination of colours. These portraits are not really portraits but more like archetypes. I'm not making a judgment, [I’m] simply following what I see.”

For Hlatshwayo, the home place is precarious and filled with tension:

“Growing up in a home with a tavern, I have been confronted with realities that made me want to escape the space. A place of refuge or safe haven should have been my home, but it couldn’t be because it was the extension of the tavern. Maybe my mind – but it was too violated. It became a tricky escape”.

Hlatshwayo’s three black and white photographic images originate from a body of work titled Slaghuis. The Afrikaans word refers to a butchery or more literally; ‘a place of slaughter’, speaking to how violence can be innately constituted in a place. Through this series, Hlatshwayo captures self-portraits in the tavern’s surroundings and goes further by abstracting and hiding our view from him. By veiling the work with this layer of abstraction, Hlatshwayo actively creates a distance between himself and the violence that is around him.

Buhlungu’s practice explores both personal and historical narratives. Through the use of language, Buhlungu’s triptych —We're Not Making This Up!, Making This Up! We're Not and This We're Not Making Up!—expands the notion of place beyond a physical reading to include positionality. A reordering of the phrase We're Not Making This Up! ruptures convention and structure through breaking syntax. Placeness and position transpire through a (re)negotiation of the titles.

For Paneng, place exists in the digital realm and IRL. In both worlds, the setting is idyllic, fanciful and sometimes bizarre. In the video work Looking At Myself, Sincerely (2020) the portrait is that of the artist - multiple frames and facets of Paneng’s own image are spliced together and layered over one another in a short, infinitely looped video. An image of the artist seated in a formal pose is suggestive of traditional portrait painting, while the neon pink of her dress, together with the green-screen aesthetic of the footage, firmly locates the work in the contemporary. Through the use of a whip, the main figure shifts and repositions fragments of the artist’s likeness in what becomes an orchestrated illusion.

By moving between (and through) the four artistic positions, the exhibition seeks to reimagine how portraiture and place are constituted.

Simnikiwe Buhlungu (b.1995) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and obtained her BA (Fine Art) degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (2017). Recent projects include Bergen Assembly: Actually, The Dead Are Not Dead, Bergen, Norway (2019) and Collective Intimacies - Notes to Self: Intimate 1, mural project, The Showroom, London, UK (2019). She has participated in international residencies, namely the WIELS residency programme in Brussels, Belgium (2018), the Future Assembly Residency between London and Cambridge (UK) and Lagos (2019 and 2020, respectively) and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2020). Lately, she enjoys listening to gospel music and has been thinking about apiaries.

Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo (b.1993) is a photographer based in Johannesburg. He joined Jabulani Dhlamini’s 'Of Soul and Joy' photography initiative in 2016 and in 2018 he completed a course in the Advanced Programme in Photography at the Market Photo Workshop. Hlatshwayo’s first Slaghuis series won him the 2019 CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography in Basel, Switzerland. His first solo exhibition, Slaghuis II, was shown at the Market Photo Workshop, and his work has appeared on group exhibitions at Fotomuseum Winterthur and IAF Basel Festival, both in Switzerland. In 2019, Hlatshwayo was the recipient of the Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography.

Born in 1986 in Lomé, Togo, Gregory Olympio lives and works in Besançon, France. He graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Besançon in France in 2015. Recent group exhibitions include: Morceaux choisis, Septieme Gallery, Paris (2020); State Of Flux, 50 Golborne Gallery, London (2019); Gestaltung der Zukunft, Forum Alte Post, Pirmasens (2019); and Shaping the future, Arp Museum, Remagen (2019). In 2018, he was awarded a grant and residency at Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral in Bad Ems, Germany.

Born in 1996, Natalie Paneng lives and works between Johannesburg and the Internet. She graduated from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018. Working predominantly with photography and videography, the use of these mediums led to the development of her YouTube channel 'Hello Nice' where she uses her skills in theatre and performance to connect to an online audience. Her work has been exhibited as part of Habit At (2020) at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg; Coexistence - Virtual Group Show (2020) at TMRW Gallery in Johannesburg; Design Indaba’s Class of 2019 Emerging Creatives, and Bubblegumclub Future 76 Residency (2018) at Hazard Gallery in Johannesburg. Paneng was a finalist for Bokeh Film Festival's Emerging Talent Category, and in 2019 she participated in Floating Reverie's online residency as well as the Faku'Gesi Digital Innovation Residency.