The Broad reveals contemporary artist William Kentridge’s exhibition « In Praise of Shadows » which will run through April 9, 2023 at its Los Angeles space.
As William Kentridge’s most significant and memorable exhibition in Los Angeles in the past two decades, this expansive review will highlight more than 130 works spanning 35 years of Kentridge’s work, including drawings, sculptures, prints, woven works, theater sets, and film vivas.
Besides « In Praise of Shadows » will be accompanied by a series of events, lectures, and exhibitions that are part of William Kentridge’s rich history of integrating a wide range of disciplines into his practice.
Surveying 35 years of his practice, « In Praise of Shadows » incorporates each of the 18 works in the Broard‘s collection with significant loans from the United States and South Africa.
Curated by Ed Schad, the presentation is coordinated both specifically and sequentially across the gallery’s second floor exhibitions. A feature of the exhibition is the 30-minute, five-channel video and interactive media installation The Refusal of Time (2012) from The Broad collection.
Features of the recently announced programming interfere artists, journalists, and performers with the core subjects of William Kentridge‘s work, such as the tradition of colonialism, bigotry, and the flexibility of building against these historical understandings.
William Kentridge lived his childhood in a period of segregation in Johannesburg, and he continued to live there throughout his life. His studio practice is inherently collaborative and extensive, spanning drawing, film, printmaking, design, theater, drama, and installation. In addition to the major drawings, figures, prints, and artworks on view at The Broad, the artist’s 11 Drawings for Projection films will be on view, as well as a series of films about early cinema, including 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Day for Night, and Journey to the Moon (all made in 2003), a set of nine short films that highlight the artist himself and praise his studio as a place for experimentation and collaborative play.
Many new drawings will be presented, made for his 2018 exhibition project The Head & the Load, which reveals chronicles of Africans and Africa during World War II.
Important early works not previously shown in the United States, such as Domestic Scenes from 1980, Art in a State of Grace, Art in a State of Hope, Art in a State of Siege, each from 1988, demonstrate William Kentridge’s political engagement, his continued mastery, and his imagination.