We are at the Johannesburg Art Fair in the stall belonging to the Cape gallery Whatiftheworld.
Our tour guide points to the offending piece in the catalogue — the original has already been sold. It is a portrait of William Kentridge as Frankenstein’s monster, red-eyed and with bolts coming out of his neck.
In some way I think the work, executed by the Avant Car Guard collective, is a compliment to the stony-faced Kentridge. Our small and elegant tour guide, Koulla Xinisteris, also a buyer for the SABC, says: ”Maybe it was sold to a Kentridge collector?” But no. We are told it was sold to some young buyers.
”Can you give us an idea of what the artist was thinking about?” Xinisteris asks the gallery representative. She turns to me and says she is not sure how to reference the creators. Is Avant Car Guard an artist, or are they artists?
Xinisteris explains that Avant Car Guard comprises three individuals who work together under that name. They exhibit as one artist as well as under their own names — Zander Blom, Jan-Henri Booyens and Michael MacGarry.
The Whatiftheworld curator, Ashleigh MacLean, answers: ”It is a comment on Kentridge. As an artist he churns out work in his accepted, well-known style, but the works are soulless. So he becomes a kind of monster.” MacLean is tall, tan and lean and looks like a Swedish masseuse. ”I don’t think that’s completely true, but he does have a certain brand or icon status,” Xinisteris interjects.
The painting under discussion is called Poor man’s Picasso and, as Mac-Lean explains, it hints at the danger of art becoming mere commodity. She points out that their Frankenstein is less scary than another portrait of Kentridge hanging in the iArt Gallery stall. I have to agree. Portrait of Kentridge by Paul Emsley is a terrifying, enormous photorealistic portrait that only a stalker could love.
MacLean tells us that some of Avant Car Guard’s works ”poke fun at the old style of painting and the whole art world”. Their staged photographs are ”painstakingly posed”. MacLean flips through the Avant Car Guard catalogue. She points to a photograph of three figures in pink, black and yellow body stockings with squares, circles and triangles on their heads. This one, she tells us, is titled Avant Car Guard and the Gay Black Lesbian Jew. Besides an obvious reference to the way in which the Nazis branded their victims, the work also references Zanele Muholi’s photograph about African lesbianism, titled Girl with Dildo.
MacLean continues flipping through the Avant Car Guard catalogue, stopping at a photograph of a classroom. In it there are students dressed in black discussing what is written on a black board. She reads it out: ”I will not use the following — gender, race, politics.”
MacLean notes that in this work the artists ”are saying they are not going to be defined by these three words”. It crosses my mind that Avant Car Guard is made up of white, middle-class men. With their irreverent humour and elaborate pranks their work is reminiscent of Kendell Geers, MTV’s Jackass and our own Crazy Monkey team — all middle-class white men too.
MacLean reads out other hilarious titles: Avant Car Guard Waiting for Mandela to die and the nu rave party experience to hit Johannesburg and Avant Car Guard perpetually on the verge of discovering a cure for art.
We leave MacLean at the Whatiftheworld gallery and wrap up the rest of the tour. The Sandton Convention Centre is a fine venue; it feels neat and efficient like an airport. Yet there is something about the perpetual light from mammoth white paper lamps hanging overhead that is wearing. It feels like it has been 1pm for four hours. I wander off to buy a coffee from the Vida counter and, coincidentally, there I find the Whatiftheworld entourage at a nearby table.
I overhear: ”Well, if nothing else, at least we get to hang out with our buddies every night. It’s been a jol.” The irreverence of the statement fits well with the work this exciting gallery has shown at the Jo’burg Art Fair.
Whatiftheworld Gallery is at 208 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town. Website: www.whatiftheworld.com