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24/6/2010

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Goethe on Main, Johannesburg

Tayou cannot be pinned down. His works teach us that identities are never unequivocal, but always constructs of various relationships. The spelling of this name itself, and even more the emphasis of his origin as "home" - rather than naming his place of birth – clearly show that Pascale Marthine Tayou will not be reduced to any of the many pigeon holes that come up each time people talk about Africa. His exhibitions on all continents around the globe are sputtering with self-will and offer an insight into his driving force: never to please, but to inventively and rather mischievously rearrange a mosaic of every-day objects in ever-new constellations.

With LooOoBhY Goethe on Main takes up a project that Tayou started in Cameroon as early as the middle of the 90s. Fascinated by the de-limiting forces of Dadaism he founded a collective that attracted attention through performances linking everyday life with utopia. Despite a great deal of resistance on the part of the public, the participants in those happenings felt the power of imagination that was unleashed by TAYOU and his combatants. That this might in fact be a danger to the saturated elites in Africa was no secret to agents even at the time. It’s a tragic fact in many African states that the rulers distrust their own artists. Even though the realm of imagination is attributed a broad effectiveness in many - even religious - African contexts, this quality invariably fails when it might lead to an apparent revolt of the individual. It is this explosion of an aesthetic foundation of the world in Africa that the name TAYOU stands for.

It is only logical and hardly deplorable that the rulers’, respectively the states’ distancing themselves from the arts lets many contemporary artists seek out life circumstances that respect, even venerate their work. TAYOU is one of them, although he does go back to Cameroon every so often in search of others following in his footsteps, looking for their personal expression of transformation. The fact that the media he uses are so varied, yet always part of the material world, makes his work wonderfully light and accessible, triggering amazement in his audience.
For Goethe on Main Tayou has created 3 space installations capturing specific phenomena in Johannesburg and implementing them artistically: Firstly, he arranges security doors decorated with wonderfully light attributes. In his second installation, he lends wings to objects that are desperately sought after in junk mails and on notice boards. Finally, he explores play areas in his third installation, pointing out how they are limited by historical constellations. Here, he takes up a language of shapes, which Tayou has developed for a large exhibition at the National Gallery in Berlin and which a few weeks earlier will be opened by the German president Köhler.

Peter Anders

Image: detail of Plastic City (2010) as installed in Malmo Konsthall, Sweden, size variable. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing, Le Moulin

For more information on Goethe on Main or the Goethe-Institut South Africa or on the exhibition please contact Kaj/Cara pr@johannesburg.goethe.org

Opening: 25 June 2010, 6:30 p.m.

Goethe on Main
245 Main Street Johannesburg South Africa
Opening hours:
Tuesday and Wednesday 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Friday 9:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

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