2024 Week 27 | Stephen Langa at David Krut Workshop


In the past few months, David Krut Workshop (DKW) had the pleasure of hosting Johannesburg based artist Stephen Langa. Langa spent a week or two at a time, at DKW collaborating with Printer Sbongiseni Khulu on different mediums, focusing mainly on oil based monotype. Langa took to the brown palette which he says is a natural homely colour for him. His work will be shown in a solo exhibition later in the year at the David Krut Projects Gallery, at The Blue House in Parkwood, Johannesburg.

 

Stephen rolling ink onto a perspex plate before working reductively into it (removing ink to create the image)
Stephen painting on a perspex sheet, creating a second layer for his oil based monotype
Stephen working on an upright perspex plate to gauge the opacity/transparency of the ink
Stephen using the back of a paintbrush to create a more controlled single line versus the softer alternative that the brush would present
Stephen using the lightbox to see the reference drawing made underneath the perspex
Stephen working reductively on a perspex plate

In taking cues from the old masters, Stephen Langa’s body of work explores diverse stories of modern day bourgeois black people, experiences of those around him and personal perspectives born from his own journey through life. 

“My charcoal linework and oil paintings have become pictorial visions that have a mesmerizing effect that is inspired directly by my emotive feelings that one can immediately identify and engage with the characters portrayed in such a way one would like to know them better in person” says Langa.

Langa’s work seeks to galvanize and has intimacy of black cultural experiences, compositions that have questions for the viewer and highlights of his own experiences of his hometown and the city as visual detailed in his journey, experiencing life in both worlds from moving to one place to another. 

’There’s a lot of intimacy when I’m engaging with my practice, and how I can evolve as an artist and myself” states Langa.

Stephen drawing an image of his artwork on the back of the perspex with sharpie as a reference point when painting the monotype
Stephen using a brush dipped in turpentine to brush away ink without it being to contrasted
Stephen adding finishing touches on an oil based monotype moments before it's printed
Stephen adding handwork with soft pastel crayon
Stephen signing his small oil based monotypes

Stephen Langa is a South African contemporary artist from the Limpopo province currently living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. Through the years Langa’s artistic practice has drawn inspiration from multiple sources by virtue of his likes and interests such as anime, impressionist art and artists like Ernest Eugene, George Pemba, Claude Monet, Gerard Sekoto and Vincent Van Gogh. In the efforts of being a renaissance man, Langa’s artistic palette includes drawing with charcoal and soft pastel, watercolor, oil paintings and recently oil-based monotypes and etching.

 

For more information about the project or to join the David Krut Projects mailing list for the show please email: [email protected]

To read more about Printer Sbongiseni Khulu and the David Krut Workshop team click below:

The David Krut Workshop Team – DAVID KRUT PROJECTS

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