“There is someone in my head and it is not me” – Pink Floyd

“Pink Freud” 2017 Cotton thread and rubber 22 x 17 cm

‘Pink Freud’ amongst others will be hanging out in a group exhibition curated by Johan Conradie titled: “Comfortably Numb”.

This exhibition will open on the 3rd of August 2017 at Gallery2 in Johannesburg, and you are invited!

Invitation

Comfortably numb – press release

Gallery 2 is pleased to present the group exhibition “Comfortably numb” from 3-24 August, 2017. Conceived by artist and curator Johan Conradie, the exhibition takes as a starting point the evocative lyrics of Pink Floyd’s 1979 song, “Comfortably numb”. The exhibition brings together the works by contemporary South African artists which combine visual tension and a strong conceptual vigour, whilst reverberating closely with the ideas and sentiments as expressed through this iconic song. Envisioned as a dialogue between the works of artists from different backgrounds, the exhibition explores notions of ‘alienation’, ‘disillusionment’, ‘delirium’, ‘disembodiment’, ’emotional detachment’, ‘in-between states’, ‘invisibility’ and ‘melancholy’.

The album “The Wall” is a concept album about Pink, an embittered and alienated rock star. The song “Comfortably numb” compares Pink’s memories of being feverishly ill as a child with his later experience of feeling nothing at all in adulthood. The lyrics feature interplay between a doctor treating the adult Pink and Pink’s inner dialogue. Roger Waters claimed that the song is about “detachment from reality” and “alienation”, while Dave Gilmour suggested that “the song could be divided into two sections: dark and light”.

Artistic practice emerges ‘in-between’, beyond geographic demarcations, and arbitrary boundaries. The exhibition emphasizes that this state of ‘in-between’ contains a wide range of assertive and rewarding potentialities. These artists engage the viewer in the often intimate movement and destruction of human life and, at the same time, the persistence of the delicate, humorous, lyrical, or divine. The sequences of narrative information and visual effect evoke the fragile endurance of the sacred and the spiritual.

This exhibition features artists AD-Reflex, Thonton Kabeya, Nathani Lüneburg, Chris Slabber, Zelda Stroud and Hannalie Taute.