CINGA SAMSON by Cinga Samson
南アフリカ出身のアーティスト、シンガ・サムソン(Cinga Samson)の作品集。2023年7月から8月までロンドンの「ホワイト・キューブ・メイソンズ・ヤード(WHITE CUBE MAISON'S YARD)」で開催された展覧会に伴い刊行された。
作者の作品は、幻覚的かつ儀式的な性質を持ち、物質的な領域と形而上学的な領域の融合を語る。この儀式的な構成は、複雑なジェスチャーで画面全体にわたって細部まで描かれ、そこでは共同体への帰属意識の特権がしばしば神秘的で非現実的な雰囲気を呼び起こさせている。
ジャーナリストであり文化評論家のルワンディレ・フィキニ(Lwandile Fikeni)、美術史家のタマール・ガーブ(Tamar Garb)によるテキストを掲載。デザインはロンドンを拠点とする「Ard.works」が手がける。
A monograph on Cinga Samson, featuring the South African artist’s dreamlike large-scale tableaux and enigmatic portraits, is published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at White Cube Mason’s Yard, London (7 July – 26 August 2023).
Possessing qualities at turns hallucinatory and ceremonial, Samson’s work speaks to the fusion of material and metaphysical realms. Numerous full-bleed details display the complex gestures at work in Samson’s ritualistic compositions, where a privileging of communal belonging often invokes a mysterious, funereal atmosphere. Navigating the unknown, the devotional and divine, an essay by Lwandile Fikeni responds to Samson’s interest in the spiritual and philosophical systems of amaXhosa and their native language of isiXhosa – where Fikeni finds ‘a multidimensional system at play’ likewise present within Samson’s paintings. An essay by Tamar Garb explores the artist’s work and its relation to place. Despite the seemingly specific context of Cape Town’s urban landscape, Garb situates this hyperreal yet oneiric figuration in a space between the real and the imagined.
Designed by Ard.works, the monograph features detailed reproductions of Samson’s cryptic portraits and scenes of collectivity. Interspersed are a sequence of studio photographs printed with inverse colouration which provide glancing notice of the meticulous and methodical labour involved in the artist’s work.