Moffat Takadiwa/Olaf Hajek

Two solo exhibitions by Takadiwa ‘Across Boarders’ and Olaf Hajek ‘Green Room’ will open with new work.

Moffat Takadiwa’s practice over the past several years has evolved to elevate found objects into sculptural forms that engage with issues of cultural identity, spirituality, social practice and the environment. His work speaks potently to the cultural dominance illustrated by the consumption of foreign products in Zimbabwe and across Africa. Takadiwa’s “object paintings” draw attention to the excess and despair implicit in our daily use of products and what patterns of consumption emerge when the empty vessels are viewed enmass. A self described “spiritual garbage man”, Takadiwa reconfigures found consumer waste gleaned from the streets and dumps of Harare into almost magical compositions that seem to convey the aura of a totemic or ritualised object.

Olaf Hajek is a painter immersed in a world of surreal fantasy and melancholic beauty. Drawing from diverse references such as 60’s African studio photography, renaissance perspective and the Dutch still lifes of the 1600’s his work is underpinned by the colour and texture of folkloric imagery. Hajek focuses enthusiastically on wonder, heroic acts, hallucinations, and fairytale motifs. With artistic virtuosity and intellectual calculation he relocates and recombines various captions of reality, planting them within new and exciting mystical connotative frameworks. Disproportional figures are often depicted posed in front of theatrical fore- and backgrounds.

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