IPAPO-IPAPO, is Gareth Nyandoro’s first solo exhibition in South Africa and his first with SMAC Gallery.

This new body of work comprises of large-scale paintings and installations, both performative and static, that utilize his unique technique of ‘Kuchekacheka’. This methodinvolves his inking, tearing, and peeling layers of paper to form an impression of his daily observations of African urban life.  The Shona term “IPAPO-IPAPO”, which translates into English as “there and then”, is used colloquially in the same way as English speakers use the acronym ‘A.S.A.P’ (as soon as possible), indicating a sense of urgency, referencing the frenzied peddlers and stall-owners in a typically Zimbabwean commercial market place. In IPAPO-IPAPO, Nyandoro evokes this atmosphere of brisk business and production.

This exhibition comes at a time when Gareth’s practice has reached a point of conceptual resolve, while simultaneously displaying his complex visual exploration. Gareth’s initial core themes have since become tangled with the evolution of urban environments in Zimbabwe and further on the continent. With these city-style spaces going through a metamorphosis, whereby things appear static, yet are impermanent. Often appropriated elements, sit like mirages in uncanny spaces, Nyandoro reinterprets these juxtapositions and commonplaces of urban societies, thus challenging audiences to ‘re-view’ and re-envision the things that frequent everyday street life, through his own relationship to them.

Read IPAPO-IPAPO by Chikonzero Chazunguza

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