The project Oblique by South African artist Abrie Fourie, curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, follows the publication of the artists’ monograph of the same name, published in 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The book marked the start of  an ongoing and evolving project, with various exhibition and publication iterations, and stems from a research grant the artist received from the Africa Centre (Cape Town, South Africa).

Since 2012 the project Oblique has been seen at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, (Berlin, Germany); the Johannesburg Art Gallery (South Africa); Iwalewa House (Bayreuth University, Germany) and SMAC Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa).

Central to Fourie’s work is an interest in the sometimes volatile and complex relationship between photography and fiction, and the disjunction between memory and what we as viewers and consumers of photography project onto the medium. The exhibition presented at SCAD foregrounds this concern with the inclusion of an HD Film installation, edited as a series of slow changing slides of all images included in the monograph. Central to this work is a narration by well known South African actor Marcel van Heerden of a text by the author and theorist Ivan Vladislavi?.

A series of mounted and framed photographs have been selected specifically for the exhibition, many editioned for the first time. In addition a series of text works, quotations from Vladislavi?’s work, are part of the exhibition.

Abrie Fourie was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1969, and lives and works in Berlin, Germany since 2007. He has presented a number of solo exhibitions at important institutions including the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, Germany), Iwalewa House (Bayreuth, Germany), the Museum for African Art (New York, USA) and the Forum d’art contemporian FAC (Sierre, Switzerland) amongst others. He was a recipient of the inaugural Africa Center Spier Contemporary Award (Cape Town, South Africa) and has participated in group exhibitions at Daimler Contemporary (Berlin, Germany), Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa) and the Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Wien, Austria) amongst others.

Storm Janse van Rensburg (b. 1972) is an independent South African curator currently based in Berlin. He was previously senior curator of Goodman Gallery Cape Town (2007 – 2011) and curator of the KwaZulu Natal Society of Arts (KZNSA), Durban (2000 – 2006). He was a founding member of the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA). Curated group exhibitions include New Painting a national traveling exhibition (KZNSA, University of South Africa Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery),  Nation State and EAT ME! for Goodman Gallery and The Beautyful Ones for Nolan Judin Gallery, Berlin. Curated solo exhibitions include Beau Diable by James Webb (National Arts Festival, 2007); Wonderland by Nontsikelelo Veleko (Standard Bank Young Artist, 2008); Portraits by David Goldblatt) Goodman Gallery Cape Town, 2011) and Labor Berlin 11: Oblique by Abrie Fourie (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, and Iwalewa House, Bayreuth, Germany, 2012). He has edited a number of exhibition catalogues and has written for African Arts journal, Art South Africa and Canvas magazines amongst others.

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