Play-Off Pretoria Art Museum - December 2011

The opening was presented in the form of a virus-off by Stephen and Louise Finn

This extensive exhibition of about 150 works featuring sculptures, photographs and etchings by Gordon Froud and paintings by Lance Friedlande is held at the Pretoria Art Museum from Wednesday, 26 October 2011 until Sunday, 22 January 2012.

Gordon Froud's artworks comprise four bodies of interrelated sculptures that use the repetition of forms and objects in various configurations to construct meaning around the human condition, particularly with regard to DNA, babies, genetics, bacteria, viruses and self-images. He has included a small photographic and etching series as well. Froud has been actively involved in the South African and international art world as artist, educator, and curator for the last 30 years. Not only has he exhibited on hundreds of solo and group shows in South Africa and overseas, and served on many arts committees throughout South Africa, but he has also judged many of the important art competitions in the country. He has taught throughout his career, here and abroad, and before he became a senior lecturer in the Sculpture Department of the University of Johannesburg in 2009 he directed the gordart Gallery in Johannesburg where he showcased the work of new, up and coming artists.

Lance Friedlande, who works as a professional artist in Johannesburg, has been painting and drawing since the age of seven. He has had the privilege of being tutored by Kenneth Bakker, Bernadine Biden, Bill Ainslie and Greg Kerr. Friedlande's paintings examine the human condition through a series of portraits, landscapes and environments with figures and animals (some observed and some invented). He often starts off with an abstract construction which evolves into the figurative, and he exploits the device of duality between the formal compositional elements and the subject to generate creativity. Sometimes he changes his work processes to facilitate regeneration, and the results that he obtains label him loosely as a Neo-romantic expressionist.

The virus-OFF exhibition calibrates and celebrates the individuality of the creative process, highlighting the similarities and differences between the activities practised by both artists to produce their work. Similarities include using creativity to resolve self-generated problems, using words to stimulate content, following an evolutionary process, and setting up an ongoing dialogue between the artist and the artwork. Also important to both artists is finding joy in the creative activity, resulting at times in virusfulness in the process as well as in the completed artwork.

Despite these and other similarities, the works of the two artists remain very different and offer a duality or virus-off in this interesting two-person show. Their exhibition has travelled from Potchefstroom to Bloemfontein and Durban, and finishes its two-year run at the Pretoria Art Museum where it is shown from October 2011 to January 2012. The large open spaces of this museum are ideal for the walkabouts and workshops that will be presented with this exhibition.