Cape art picks: February 4 2011

SA’s newest names in fine art make their debut.

• Masters Moving Out offers last year’s UCT Masters in Fine Art graduates an opportunity to exhibition their work in its entirety. More a collection of five solo exhibitions than a unified group show, it features the work of Claire Jorgensen, Catherine Dickerson, Robyn Nesbitt, Ryna Cilliers and Elgin Rust. Displaying a marked turn away from the focus on self and identity that has consumed South African art over the last decade, these five ‘young masters” tackle everything from the dynamics of globalization, to the relations between people, power and the environment, and notions of community and capitalism. Yet for all the politics and ideology, their work is never didactic. Instead they employ a wide array of diverse and unusual media – from performative installations, to kinetic sculptures, ‘moving stills” photography and even water-based assemblages, in a series of subtle and complex exhibitions that’s display a maturity beyond their years..
  
  Michaelis Gallery, Hiddingh Campus 32 – 37 Orange Street, Gardens. Until February 14.

• In a career spanning more than two decades, Malcolm Payne has worked in virtually every medium, from plastics, metals, to trinkets from everyday life and more recently video. A wry conceptualist and astute commentator his work is characterized by a deadpan humour that belies its socio-political content. “First of all, I don’t take art particularly seriously. I make the work because I enjoy making it. No more complicated reason than that,” Payne once commented. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his 18th solo exhibition, Pogonology. As the title suggests, it features a series of paintings premised on the aesthetics, history and significance of facial hair.

  Blank Projects, 113-115 Sir Lowry road, Woodstock, Cape Town. Opens February 9. Runs until March 19.