There are a few ways to travel around the world without stepping into an aircraft or onto a ship, and one of the most curious is certainly through art.
If you haven’t yet been to WHATIFTHEWORLD gallery, you’re in for an art-world treat, and with the latest solo exhibition by John Phalane, the odds are doubled.
Phalane is a texture-focused artist who manipulates perspectives and dimensions to create his own visual language of street maps. His inspiration? Well, he was a driver for sixteen years in Johannesburg.
“Flat, squared representations of urban and residential districts, that cue the visual language of street maps, are upended by blue horizons. Here, traffic lights bend to your gaze, their limited spectrum submitting wholeheartedly,” says WHATIFTHEWORLD.
“The rooms on the western side of Sun City’s ziggurat spill over its unreliable edge and are committed to the mountain. Buildings squeeze into one another, competing for space before the checkerboard shoreline of Rio de Janeiro,” the gallery adds of Phalene’s map magic.
Phalane’s distortions are described as “generous” and loosen the limits that perspectives engulf. You may have been to a certain spot in South Africa or overseas a thousand times, but through the artist’s eyes, it’s always a first.
Phalane offers commentary on the maps so that the audience can engage. A traffic light everyone gets stuck at, or something that’s never looked as it seems, through Phalane’s recollections.
Colour, patterns, texture and experience, the Limpopo-born artist’s world is ready to invite Cape Town’s multiple perspectives until mid-July.
Details:
- Where: WHATIFTHEWORLD Gallery | First Floor, 16 Buiten St, Cape Town City Centre
- When: 16 July
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Picture: John Phalene