rosenclaire / re•collections / 2010
Goodman Gallery Cape proudly presents the first solo exhibition by rosenclaire in South Africa for over twenty years. Working under the name rosenclaire, Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky present a conversation between their respective and collective practices and identities in re.collections.
The show’s title refers to a collection of arbitrary objects and thoughts waiting to be re-ordered, renamed and remembered: a heterogeneous gathering. Across-pollination between the flea-market, the studio, art history and personal experience, the show is a juxtaposition of painting, drawing, sculpture and installation. rosenclaire refer to their work as context-specific, governed by implicit signification where the subject matter defines the choice of media and stylistic convention.
re.collections, implies a reference to collections, collecting, correcting, naming, renaming and reframing cultural constructs of art and artifice. Here Gavronsky’s remake of Goya’s caprices, complimented by her large paintings and bronze sculptures tease and taunt our notions of art and marketing the mark. Shakinovsky’s museum sleuthing and Brechtian interruptions dissolve the boundaries and transgress the borders between art and non-art. A video by Shakinovsky from an ongoing series of illicitly filmed museum walks, and a sound piece by rosenclaire complete this intervention. re.collections and its implications with regard to history and memory, both personal and political, are explored by Gavronsky, in a collapsing and enfolding of history, in which she presents Dante’s hell, side by side with the Beslan massacre of the innocents, in a series of large oil paintings.
Artworks
About
rosenclaire
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Live and work in Florence, Italy
Claire Gavronsky (b. 1957, Johannesburg) works in a variety of mediums, most notably in painting and sculpture. Her work often uses visual references to historical paintings, and cues are sometimes taken from events from everyday life. Memory, racism, violence against women and children are some of the themes which run through her oeuvre.
Notable solo and group exhibitions include: Mirror of the Mind: Figuration in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami ( 2024) ; Viewing Room exhibitions, Goodman Gallery, London, (2024), Io e Me. Autoritratti nel Lockdown. Sala 1, Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2021); Speechless with Rose Shakinovsky, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2018); Right to the Future, Museum of 20th and 21st Century Art, St Petersburg (2017); Colour Theory with Rose Shakinovsky, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2014); Dakar Biennale, Dakar (2010); and Dystopia, collaboration with William Kentridge, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Ghent (2009-2010).
Rose Shakinovsky’s (b. 1953, Johannesburg) work defies any stylistic category as it consists of work that ranges from the re-presentation and decontextualization of found objects, found images and found situations, to delicately painted abstractions and ironic bronzes. The work concerns itself with current political and social discourses while simultaneously referencing and reconstructing art historical edifices. Her present research is concerned with discourses pertaining to the posthuman, transhuman and the consequences of climate change.
Notable solo and group exhibitions include: Mirror of the Mind: Figuration in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami ( 2024) ; Viewing Room exhibitions, Goodman Gallery, London, (2024); Io e Me. Autoritratti nel Lockdown. Sala 1, Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2021); Speechless with Claire Gavronsky, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2018); Right to the Future, Museum of 20th and 21st Century Art, St Petersburg (2017); COLORI: L’emozione dei COLORI nell’arte, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli (2017); Assessing Abstraction, South African National Gallery (2017); Colour Theory with Rose Shakinovsky, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2014); Dakar Biennale, Dakar (2010).
Shakinovsky collaborates with Gavronsky as the artist “rosenclaire”, as dedicated mentors who have run a renowned artists residency program in Tuscany for the past 30 years.
Collections:
FAMM – Female Artists of the Mougins Museum, France
Claire Gavronsky
(b. 1957, Johannesburg)
Claire Gavronsky works in a variety of mediums, most notably in painting and sculpture. Her work often uses visual reference’s to historical paintings, and cues are sometimes taken from events from everyday life. Memory, racism, violence against women and children are some of the theme’s which run through her oeuvre. Her work also bridge’s sometimes complex narratives through overlaid images, and stories which link the past to the present.
In 1981 Gavronsky received a Master of Fine Art in painting, and she moved to Italy in 1985 and has since lived between Cape Town and Tuscany.
In Florence, Gavronsky established, with fellow artist Rosemarie Shakinovsky, an international artist’s residency workshop in Tuscany. After the success of these workshops they founded workshops in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Venda and Botswana. Gavronsky and Shakinovsky often collaborate under the name Rosenclaire. They also collaborate on occasion with William Kentridge. She has exhibited extensively in South Africa, Europe and the United States of America.
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Rose Shakinovsky
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1953. Lives and works in Florence, Italy
Rose Shakinovsky’s work defies any stylistic category as it consists of work that ranges from the re-presentation and decontextualization of found objects, found images and found situations, to delicately painted abstractions and ironic bronzes. The work concerns itself with current political and social discourses while simultaneously referencing and reconstructing art historical edifices. Shakinovsky is interested in the structure as well as the morphology of all seemingly coherent visual and nonvisual languages from the prelinguistic to the post-linquistic and the digital. Her present research is concerned with discourses pertaining to the Posthuman, Postanthropos, Transhuman, Migration and the consequences of Climate Change.
Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky collaborate as the artist “rosenclaire”, as wives and as dedicated mentors who have run a renowned artists residency program in Tuscany for the past 30 years.
Shakinovsky has over the past decade given contemporary art history courses to collectors, philanthropists and business leaders hoping to inspire them to contribute to fostering the arts in their respective countries.
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