Untitled Art 2024

South African artist Jozua Gerrard shows enamel-on-glass paintings following his recent solo exhibition, In the Present Tense, at Southern Guild Cape Town. With their confectionery colours, radical flatness and considered compositions, Gerrard’s works present an uncanny vision of reality. Their smooth consistency and saturated lacquer of paint beneath reflective glass deftly recall the screens we interact with daily. His practice responds to our current post-digital landscape, negotiating the pervasive force that is our relationship with social media. Born in Cape Town in 2001, the artist is of a generation conditioned to pay rapt attention to the experiences that give them pleasure, turning them into stylised rituals for virtual display. The paintings’ tightly cropped frames lend a voyeuristic accessibility to each subject, imitating the illusory closeness one might feel for a favourite celebrity.

Wycliffe Mundopa, one of Zimbabwe’s leading painters, unveils a number of large-scale oils articulating the spectrum of his prolific visual vocabulary. Focusing on the symbolic value of images and their contextual references to the sub-culture of Harare’s notorious high-density neighbourhood, Mbare, Mundopa has developed theatrical and idiomatic narratives about life in his country. He renders the city’s most vulnerable social factions – women and children – with a liberated hand. His figures enter and exit the frame, each with their own characterisation, building densely layered storytelling that immerses us in a world both scintillating and disturbing. Mundopa’s solo exhibition, Mbare Opera, takes place at Southern Guild Los Angeles at the same time as Untitled Art (21 November, 2024 – 1 February, 2025).

Beninese artist Dominique Zinkpè is represented by two free-standing bronze sculptures comprised of hundreds of hand-carved figurines recalling the Yoruba tradition of Ibéji dolls. When a twin dies in infancy, it is believed by family members that these statuettes embody the deceased’s spiritual energy. Rooted in his culture and proximity to Voudou, Zinkpè’s creations meld figuration and abstraction, encompassing both the individual and collective. His practice is informed by a deeply communal approach: his workshop in Cotonou is a hub of collaboration and skills exchange where up to 20 other artisans and artists gather to work.

Congolese artist Patrick Bongoy exhibits an intricate, sculptural wall-hanging made from thousands of pieces of repurposed rubber. Bongoy’s painstaking process draws on traditional basket-making skills while referencing the physical labour that defines day-to-day life in the DRC. Shape Study I incorporates vivid colour and tactile moments of surprising intricacy. Through the artist’s arduous weaving, cutting, braiding and stitching of rubber, the sculptural forms offer the harsh material an unexpected lightness. This material transformation speaks to a broader intent at the core of Bongoy’s practice: the transmutation of pain toward hope, of a history of violence toward liberation of the mind, of reinvigorating what is discarded into an object that is both generative and abundant.

First-time exhibitor at Untitled Alex Hedison will show an abstract photographic work made with camera-less techniques, including chemigrams (which produce an image using chemicals on light-sensitive paper) and hand-painted surfaces. An artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, Hedison is known for photography that brings attention to the ‘in between’ state. The work shown at Untitled is part of a series, titled A Brief Infinity, that breaks from her largely representational oeuvre – the result of experiments she conducted using black and white photo paper and other materials such as packing tape, metallic paint and varnish in her dark room during the COVID pandemic. She photographed the chemigrams from one instant to the next, making records of their fleeting process of development – an abiding interest for the artist.