Mikhael Subotzky

Mikhael Subotzky’s (b. 1981) works are the results of his fractured attempts to place himself in relation to the social, historical, and political narratives that surround him. As an artist working in film, video installation and photography, as well as more recently in collage and painting, Subotzky engages critically with contemporary politics of images and their making. “At the heart of my work is a fixation with revealing the gap between what is presented (and idealised) and what is hidden, coupled with a desire to pull apart and reassemble the schizophrenia of contemporary existence,” he says. 

Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981) was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and is currently based in Johannesburg. Subotzky’s photographic work combines the directness of the social documentary mode with a questioning of the nature of the photographic medium itself. He is concerned with structures of narrative and representation, as well as the relationship between social storytelling and the formal poetics of image-making. Over the past eight years, his work has focused on the inside and outside of South Africa’s notorious prisons, the small town of Beaufort West, and Ponte City, a single iconic building in Johannesburg.  His exhibition, Massive Nervous Corpus, which included his print series made at DKW, marks a new stream in Subotzky’s work – a cross-medium attempt to illustrate and understand the giant modernist poet T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets, four long poems that were published over the course of 6 years, the last work of poetry created by the modernist giant, which are in essence a meditation on time and the process of moving through a life beset with massive and destabilising change. Subotzky’s work has been exhibited widely in major galleries and museums, and his prints are in numerous important collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington), Tate (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the South African National Gallery. In 2020, Subotzky was listed in the Apollo International Art Magazine's list of 40 Under 40 as 1 of 40 people below the age of 40 who were born, are based in, or have worked on the African continent — and who are transforming the way that art is made and experienced.   In 2019, Mikhael Subotzky collaborated with the David Krut Workshop on a body of prints called the Four Quartet Series: Humorism (After Eliot and da Messina). The series of eight prints mark the artist’s first foray into printmaking and combines a number of techniques, including photogravure, silkscreen, digital chine collé and monotype. The prints continue Subotzky’s investigation into white masculine vulnerability. The series was created in concert with a new body of work, Massive Nerve Corpus, a solo presentation of paintings, drawings and collages which opened in May 2019 at Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg).  

News

Current collaboration with photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa: Experimenting with pronto plate and chine collé prints
Sep. 22, 2021

Lindo Sobekwa and printer Sarah Judge discussing a pronto print which has just been printed. Photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa was introduced...

Tags: Chine Collé, David Krut Workshop, Kim-Lee Loggenberg, Lindo Sobekwa, lithography, Photography, Polyester plate, Pronto plate, Sarah Judge
Project Prep at David Krut Workshop
Apr. 8, 2020

Written by Sarah Judge Think about a chocolate cake! Doesn’t that sound delicious? If I wanted to eat a home-baked cake it wouldn’t just appear, right? Maybe if I had super...

Tags: Arts on Main, Chad Cordeiro, David Krut Workshop, Jillian Ross, Kim-Lee Loggenberg, Maja Maljević, Mikhael Subotzky, Printmaking, printmaking south africa, Sarah Judge, Sbongiseni Khulu, william kentridge
Mikhael Subotzky in conversation with Phil Sanders | 30 Sept 3pm
Sep. 28, 2017

IN CONVERSATION WITH MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY AND PHIL SANDERSSeptember 30 | 3 pm at the Brewery in Arts on Main, Maboneng Image:...

Tags: Arts on Main, Collaborative printmaking, David Krut, David Krut Print Workshop, David Krut Projects Arts on Main, Mikhael Subotzky, Monotype, Phil Sanders, Photogravure, Printmaking, South Africa
David Krut Podcast | In Conversation with Mikhael Subotzky and Phil Sanders | Listening Time 60 min
Jun. 19, 2017

In 2017, David Krut Projects and the Goodman Gallery hosted an intimate talk between Mikhael Subotzky and Master Printer Phil...

Tags: Artist Talk, Arts on Main, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, David Krut Podcast, Goodman gallery, Phil

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