Glyph Impact

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the career of William Kentridge has spanned 50 years, with his work being shown in major museums, galleries, fairs and biennials around the world. The artist’s Glyphs collection forms a visual lexicon made of a series of sculptures that represent a collection of everyday objects, symbols and icons, ubiquitous in the artist’s practice. Beginning as ink drawings and paper cut-outs, each on a single page of a dictionary, the drawings are transmuted into bronze sculptures to embody the weight and essence of their shapes on paper. They can be arranged in order to construct sculptural sentences and an ever-changing meaning. City Deep is Kentridge’s most recent film from his Drawings For Projection series. The film can be viewed as a counterpoint to the 1990 movie, Mine, which depicts images of the deep-level mining industry. City Deep extends this depiction to the informal, surface-level “zama zama” miners who illegally work decommissioned mines on the edges of the formal mining economy. In addition to his exhibit through Jan 2022 at Goodman Gallery, the artist is currently working toward major survey exhibitions that will take place next year at The Royal Academy in London and The Broad in Los Angeles; Goodman-GalleryUK.com.