Artist talk by Roger Ballen at Kvadrat 500: 15 November, Thursday, 6 pm, V floor
One of the most important photographers of the 21 century – Roger Ballen is coming to Bulgaria for the first time in order to open his retrospective exhibition “Archetypes”.
80 black and white photographs from 7 series made in South Africa between 1982 and 2014 will be exhibited at the National Gallery/Kvadrat 500 and City Art Gallery-Plovdiv. “Archetypes” is a story about chaos, fears, shadows, illusions and everything we’ve been made of. The shows comments some of the most common archetypal states of the human psyche and leads us from dark to light, from absurdity to irony, from despair to spiritual release.
“My images are pervaded by symbols from the deeper levels of the human subconscious. This place is untameable; has its own rules and functions according to its own laws. My photographs link my own interior with the outside world. Nevertheless, there are infinite possibilities and it is up to me to organise the world through the camera. I am basically one who organises visual chaos into visual coherency,” says Ballen.
Ballen is co-director and art-director of the video “I Fink U Freeky” which marks the beginning of the collaboration between him and the band Die Antwoord. By his emblematic aesthetics and provocation, the artist has become one of the most influential photographers, well-liked by every new generation that recognizes his art as a philosophy of living and a symbol of the times we are living in.
His images include people, animals, drawings, installations that create a world on the edge between reality and fiction.
Ballen will have an artist talk and the audience will have the opportunity to see and listen to him two days after the opening of the show. The photographer will tell the audience more about photography and what lies beyond it, art that lasts and the stages of his art in time. The artist talk will be in English and the entrance is free with pre-registration:
https://goo.gl/forms/UTdwmhG6ld6dnWLq2
Roger Ballen (1950) was born in New York, USA but has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa for more than 30 years. His artworks are in the museum collections of MoMA (New York), Tate Britain (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Pushkin Museum (Moscow), Pompidou (Paris) and many more.
