Mongezi Ncaphayi’s latest body of work – produced for his solo exhibition, Which Way is East? – registers a fresh iteration in what is becoming the young painter-printmaker’s unfolding search for the sublime.

This new selection of work comprises of a series of vast, horizontal vistas of abstract formulations; works on paper that grow and extend the pictorial vocabulary of his previous works and seem to notably privilege his interest in the art of painting over the medium of print-making.

If we think of cartography as a science or aesthetic practice that builds on the premise that; corporeal reality or its imagined variant can be modelled to communicate spatial information, then Ncaphayi is in the business of teaching us how to navigate, illustrating the nature of its affective force. His work points to his interest in harnessing the power of abstract painted forms and jazz music, along with their capacity to speak to the grand and awe-inspiring world within man.

– Excerpt from Which Way is East?
by Percy Mabandu

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Which Way is East? opens on Wednesday, 13 September at 17h30 until late, as part of Gallery Night, and will be showing at SMAC Gallery Cape Town until 07 October 2017.

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www.smacgallery.com

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