Suzanne Cotter (Director of Mudam) presents “William Kentridge. More Sweetly Play the Dance"

“William Kentridge. More Sweetly Play the Dance"
13.02 - 30.08.2021
@ Mudam Luxembourg - The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg) has been making art for more than four decades. Anchored in the practice of drawing, his extensive oeuvre encompasses filmed animation, performance, theatre and opera. This exhibition is the first of its kind in presenting Kentridge’s artistic production alongside works for stage and opera for the red bridge project - a collaboration between Mudam Luxembourg, the Philharmonie Luxembourg and the City of Luxembourg’s Grand Théâtre.
Known for his animated films that employ charcoal drawings made through a distinctive process of erasure and recovery, Kentridge moves across and between mediums and disciplines in a dynamic play of deconstruction and recomposition of visual forms. His work is resolutely narrative in its treatment of themes connected to history, time and the importance of absurdity in a world of pronounced certainties. Kentridge addresses these subjects through the lens of his native South Africa.
Presented are drawings, sculptures, sound and film works that reveal the artist’s continued meditation on history and subjectivity, and on the construction of meaning, through images, language, sound, and time. In Kentridge’s universe, time is historic, geological, cinematic, and, especially, the time of the studio.
Curator: Suzanne Cotter, assisted by Christophe Gallois and Nelly Taravel
Exhibition design: Sabine Theunissen, assisted by Julie Vandendael
Within the framework of: red bridge project
With the support of: Banque Degroof Petercam Luxembourg; Loo & Lou Foundation, under the aegis of the Fondation de Luxembourg
Media partner: Luxemburger Wort
The exhibition is organised as part of the the second edition of the red bridge project, an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Mudam Luxembourg, the Philharmonie Luxembourg and the Grand Théâtre Luxembourg.
The monumental drawing Shadow (2021) was made in collaboration with the ÉSAL - École supérieure d'art de Lorraine.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the Mudam has partnered with Walther König for the edition of the artist's book Waiting for the Sibyl, and with the Dilecta Editions for a book of interviews between William Kentridge and Denis Hirson, À pas de panthère, available from April 2021.