Moshekwa Langa: Paradise

Moshekwa Langa's indexical practice spans drawing, installation, video, and photography, culling materials from his immediate surroundings to record his own history and emotions. For the gallery's online viewing room, Langa presents seven new drawings started in 2014 and completed earlier this year when he returned to his Amsterdam studio in March during lockdowns in Europe. First initiated by soaking paper in a mixture of salt and coffee, when Langa returned to the works this year, he added bleach to create openings for vibrant layers of acrylic and colored pencil. Dreamlike in their appearance, the drawings result from the mediation of seemingly heterogeneous elements, with the slow accumulation of marks functioning as a record of passing time. Simultaneously poetic and sentimental, Langa's works seek to create a visual language to convey personal events and feelings, as a way to grapple with the often slippery qualities of meaning. 

Moshekwa Langa lives and works in Amsterdam. In Fall 2021, Langa's first exhibition with the gallery, as well as the artist's first solo exhibition in New York, will be presented at the gallery's 22 Cortlandt Alley location. In 2022, Langa's work will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, the first institutional exhibition of his work in his home country. Past solo exhibitions of Langa’s work have been presented at venues that include Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom, The Rennaissance Society, Chicago, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, among others. In 2018, Langa’s work was included in We Don’t Need Another Hero, 10th Berlin Biennale, Germany, and The Red Hour, The 13th Dakar Biennale, Senegal. Langa additionally participated in the 2011 Lyon Biennale, the 2010 and 1998 editions of the Bienal de São Paulo, the 2009 and 2003 editions of the Venice Biennale, and the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor.