ARTIST PORTFOLIO STOMPIE SELIBE · 2019-09-10 · 2018 Black Soul by Ashraf Jamal, Cape Town,...

ARTIST PORTFOLIOSTOMPIE SELIBE

2Berman Contemporary South African Art / ArRTIST PORTFOLIO/STOMPIE SELIBE

ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIO

My work is a dialogue between the image making process, the visual representation

itself and the transformation and expression of that into vibrations and sound shared

with others. It explores the continuity of the creative process. My new work continues

to explore and give a voice to that which is dark, hidden, unseen, that which I call the

shadows. As social beings, we learn to create new tools with the old, the broken, the

discarded and dismissed, which enables us to see new possibilities with and from the

shadows. Creating new opportunities with these tools results in an unleashing and

transformation of potential and creativity emerging from this obscurity.

This artistic process on my part is an offering to the viewer/audience of a different

experience of art and the role of the viewer. I offer an opportunity for the viewers to

experience and be a part of the performance of creation and the ensuing

conversation, to not be a passive recipient of an image but to be a part of building

something new out of the old. To claim the shadows, to be able to see the creative,

humanistic and developmental value of the hidden, the lost, the ugly, as these are

rooted in our shared history with vibrations, energy, rhythm and impulses that are the

fertiliser for our becoming as individuals and as groups, communities, and societies.

Music plays an essential part in the inspiration and creation of a piece of art; it begins

by me listening to music and using the process of musical improvisation that is free-

spirited and without boundaries; that allows the possibility to both play and express

myself. I can then share this process and new ideas with fellow musicians, artists, and

the viewers/audience. Early on I found the process to be healing and since then it is

one I want to share. The most important thing is that it shaped me into the person I

am today. The use of different materials helps the whole thing become a therapeutic

process for myself and others and I take a lot of pleasure in this process – this is what I

pictured 20 years ago and it has inspired me to be an artist ever since.

My artistic signature and style have been shaped by the joy and exploration of a daily

practice of making things and being able to be reflective as well as self-critical of my

work. This back-and-forth process of creating and reflecting, and of engaging in

making meaning with others, has resulted in the definition of my style. I enjoy weaving

together elements of artist-philosopher-creator-builder-connector-musician-

questioner-explorer and the ultimate culmination of it all being amalgamated into one

thing.

Selibe was born in Soweto in 1974, and his art education came in the form of arts

programs such as those offered by Manu College, Dorkay House, Art Therapy Centre

and Artist Proof Studios: “They, as well as other programs, played a significant role in

the development of my career, they taught me about different materials and

processes that I could then experiment with more confidently and with greater insight

into what I wanted to say and do, and who I wanted to do it for, and with.”

Website bermancontemporary.com

Instagram @stompie.selibe

Solo Exhibitions

2019 Listen to the Sweet Sounds of the Shadows, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 House & Leisure Private Launch for Johannesburg Gold Edition Oct/Nov 2018, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 Discovery Leadership Summit, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2016 Broken Chords, Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Group Exhibitions

2018 Welcome to Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2012 Alliance Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2010 David Krut Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Art Fairs

2019 Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa


2017 Cape Town Art Fair, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2016 START Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London, South Africa


2016 That Art Fair, Cape Town, South Africa

2015 Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), Oudtshoorn, South Africa

2015 Turbine Art Fair (TAF 15), Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2015 Guest artist Ballhaus Naunynsse Theater, Berlin, Germany

2014 Turbine Art Fair (TAF 14), Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Collections

KBH Investment Group, Dubai

Tricolt Property Development CC

Magnolia Ridge Properties, South Africa

LTF Trade Finance Group, South Africa

LEETEK Electro Projects, South Africa

Oakleaf Capital CC

Fani Titi, CEO Investec Wealth, South Africa

Sharon & Paolo Calderari, Miami, USA

Mandy Lamb Collection, Singapore

Winer Collection, South Africa/UK

Gillian Gamsu Colleciton, South Africa

Publications ( 6/17 – full list available on request)

2018 Black Soul by Ashraf Jamal, Cape Town, Publication Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 Golden City. Launch of House & Leisure issue Golden City, November 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 The Neo-Expressionists: Stompie Selibe | John-Michael Metelerkamp by Ashraf Jamal, Publication Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 Thoughts on Stompie Selibe's Art of Abstraction by Thembinkosi Goniwe, Berman Contemporary , Johannesburg, South Africa

A Fine Art Investment by Shereen Lurie, SA Homeowner Magazine, June 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 Neo-Expressionist Revival by Thembinkosi Goniwe and Ellen Agnew, Publication by Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 Expressing Therapy by Ellen Agnew, Art Africa Magazine, March 2018, South Africa

Residencies | Conferences

2017 House & Leisure, Johannesburg Gold Edition, Featured Artist, October/November Issue, Johannesburg, South Africa

2018 Discovery Leadership Summit, Johannesburg, South Africa

2004 Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts, Brandeis University, Massachusetts, USA

Education

2000/04 Art Therapy Centre Training Programme

1998 Dobsonville College

1999 Wits Technikon Training Course

1991-1993 Dorkay House Music School, RSA

ARTIST RESUME

3Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBIE

LISTEN TO THE SWEET SOUND OF THE SHADOWS

SOLO EXHIBITION 2019

4Berman Contemporary South African Art / ARTIST PORTFOLIO / STOMPIE SELIBE

I lie here thinking of you, 2019

Mixed Media on Canvas

100cm in diameter




How sad that I hope, 2019

Mixed media on canvas

224x151cm




Love found, 2019

Mixed media on canvas

76x180cm

I wanted to be, 2019


76x180cm




In a silent way, 2019

Diptych mixed media on canvas

180x153cm




Passion & Partner, 2019

Mixed media on paper

112x76cm

Passion & Partner, 2019


112x76cm




Upon this earth, 2019


208x100cm

End in the darkness, 2019

Mixed Media on Paper

208x100cm




Shangaan colours, 2019


70x100cm



70x100cm



70x100cm



70x100cm

SHANGAAN DRESS SERIES

2019


Shangaan Dress, 2019


70x60cm



70x60cm



70x60cm



70x60cm


Thoughts on Stompie Selibe’s Art of Abstraction

By Thembinkosi Goniwe

Music and images are key features in Stompie Selibe’s works of art – most of which are concerned with a desire to discover the

‘unknown’ and the possibility to express, if not touch, that which resides in the remote realm of a human’s ‘inner being’. What seems

to be at the centre of Selibe’s quest is a creative investigation of mystery – he is after the potentiality of a curative wonderment.

Selibe’s work sensibly speaks about healing through art, where the subjective undertaking of art making is considered as an eternal

mission necessary – not only to discover, but most importantly – to excavate and liberate the obscure interiority in the life experience

of being human in the world.

The art of abstraction in the form of musical sounds and visual images seems to afford Selibe the expressive means to uncover human

depths – tapping into those sensitive areas of inexplicable emotions or psychic energies. These are the energies that so many people

find impossible to identify, comprehend or appreciate. Here, the ‘inner being’ and the ‘unknown’ perhaps reside in what Selibe calls

the ‘sacred self’.

The challenge to tap into this ‘sacred self’ – what could be a repository of (unfamiliar though charged) emotional, psychic and intuitive

attributes of being human – supposedly owing to the perversity of the violence, trauma and depression that most people experience

in our overwhelmingly materialistic world – the condition of never existing without tension, conflict and uproar.

It would seem we live in a world devoid of harmony, calm, amity or serenity, but certainly we are familiar with chaos, madness,

clamour and pandemonium – the consequences of which include the impossibility to attend to our inner-selves, to listen to our

internal beings, or to hear the whisper of our interior voices.

How is it possible to do so, in what Guy Debord once called “the society of the spectacle”, which, in our immediate context, Njabulo

Ndebele dubbed “mind-bogglingly spectacular”? Many South African artists, both young and established, tend to make artworks that

reproduce – if not reinforce and thus render normative – this spectacular society of ‘social absurdity’, further critiqued by Ndebele as

“the emptying out of interiority for the benefit of its exterior signs”. Notwithstanding the limit of these types of artworks, let alone

their deficiency of imagination, they fail in effecting a different understanding – novel knowledge about our complex world where

creative engagement in visual representations, for example, cannot be constricted within the threshold of the real. Not to say these

subject themes are not important, but the problem is their constancy, as if nothing other than objective representation matters.

To hear Selibe speak about the ‘unknown’, the ‘inner being’, the ‘sacred self’ or ‘sacred transactions’ is encouraging precisely because

he reminds us of other subjects’ themes. And to look at his abstract artworks is also an important reminder that there are other

creative procedures through which to engage society, to invite us into an abstract universe of different and novel visual content, form

and character. For his art of abstraction affords us a minute inside a world not populated by subjects, objects and places that are

known or knowable.


Even if not persuasive enough, Selibe’s body of abstract artworks partakes in the curious search for a creative means to unearth and

discover the ‘unknown’. In such effort, his work brings into existence something fresh. His aspiration is not a definitive quest for

originality or authenticity, but rather a potential mission premised on shifting perceptions – opening up unusual paths that might lead

us to strange destinations where there awaits discoveries of unknown phenomena and experiences.

Here, I am also not referring to the key attributes of art as a practice of initiating and introducing unfamiliar areas of thinking, feeling

and acting – instead of illustrating, demonstrating or representing the already known properties of our (discernible) world. I am also

thinking of an artistic imagination whose potential lies in the way in which one is able to bring to life that which is known anew; or if

not anew, it should, at least, posit refreshing configurations that are enabled by a consciously effective manipulation of aesthetics,

contents, mediums and materials. This is what Selibe strives for.

After many years of exploration and experimentation, Selibe has developed a resourceful method of “deconstructing and

reconstructing musical sounds” that are then translated into visual constructs and forms. He pays close attention to his surroundings

and allows his various senses to respond by absorbing and transmitting what he hears, sees, touches and feels into expressive

imagery. Though we encounter these artworks in their externalised objecthood, they should be understood as imaginative expressions

of his inner soul, for they speak to Selibe’s desires that are constitutive of an inextricable play between yearning for the unknown and

the need to express the inexpressible.

Enabling him such a possibility is the art of abstraction, which also somewhat affords him a way to explore what Ndebele refers to as

the “interiority of self” instead of being preoccupied with the “exteriority surface” of social life. An undertaking of this nature is

noteworthy, as it also recalls Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness philosophy – one of whose central precepts is the criticality of

introspection which requires “an inward-looking process” so necessary for an outward-looking reflection in a world read by Frantz

Fanon as “wretched” and “anti-black”.

When Selibe speaks about his work and experience in creative arts and therapeutic education, integrating music and visual learning, it

is important to read them in the context of the “wretched” and “anti-black” world – one which needs not only healing but

transformation that takes into account the psycho-emotional interiority of people who continue to suffer from the devastation of

colonial apartheid and its afterlife in democratic South Africa. For people are not only physically affected; they are also psycho-

emotionally damaged.

Selibe is quite correct to say “we are engaged in a sacred transaction which we know only a little, the shadow not the shape” of what it

means to be human, to be alive in the world. Such shadow and the sacred self are the unknown inner being, which he tackles through

abstraction – even if some of his artworks are wanting in their visual grammar, refinement of artistic form, innovative language and

experimentation of the medium and material. Yet, such deficit does not detract from Selibe’s curious art of abstraction, which enables

him a proximity from which to engage with the realm of human introspection, through a creative manoeuvring whose result is a body

of artworks inviting our engagement and appreciation.

???

2018


Beautiful to Each Other, 2018


83x174cm

But They Know About Us, 2018


83x202cm

Here We Are, 2018


76x212cm

LOVE FOUND

2018


Love Found, 2018

Mixed Media on Fabriano

142x100cm

I Know I Have Been Dreaming, 2018


142x100cm

MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME

2018


My Baby Just Cares For Me, 2018


211x290cm

Jazz Interpretation, 2018


211x290cm

BROKEN TEXTURES

2018


Cannon-ball-run-theme, 2018


71x100cm

Feel So Good, 2018


71x100cm each, Diptych 71x200cm


Expressing Therapy – Daniel Stompie Selibe at Berman Contemporary

By Ellen Agnew

Perhaps most noted for his work within music and the visual arts, Daniel Stompie Selibe – more commonly known as Stompie – has

also worked extensively with outreach programmes across South Africa.

Having trained in art therapy at the Art Therapy Centre in Johannesburg in 2001, Selibe has over a decade of experience and is

equipped with the correct tools to work with survivors of abuse, rape and those living with HIV/Aids. Selibe also works with teenagers

who share both his talent and passion for the arts, encouraging South African youth to express who they are through creativity.

This extraordinary ability to communicate with teenagers and those in need of healing can be put down, perhaps, to Selibe’s

philosophy of using both music and the visual arts to explore ‘textures’ within society – where ‘textures’ can be loosely translated to

mean ‘layers of our existence’. Selibe’s artistic processes and artworks are invitations to explore the known and the unknown, asking

questions such as ‘who are we?’, ‘who are we to each other?’, and ‘how did we become who we are?’ – undoubtedly, questions that

subsist within his Healing Through Art workshops.

While exploring ‘textures’ within society through music and art, Selibe also uses his practice to explore ‘texture’ as it exists in sound,

space, colour and rhythm – all impacting on how he communicates with those around him. A significant question of ‘texture’ in

Selibe’s work is his concern with “how the fingerprints of history shape us and our environments. The world is as the shoreline –

shaping much of our experience, and each of us is like the river – full of our unique energy, feelings, desires, secrets, pains and actions.

Over time, we shape and re-shape each other by our actions”.

This is a philosophy that can be seen in his mixed-media paintings, where Selibe has visibly left traces of his shaping and re-shaping of

the artwork – at once a vibrant expression of colour, and a reminder to us all that we, too, are a work-in-progress, always a flowing

river.

This can most notably be seen in The Love I Lost / Deep Tech, where the Fabriano stretches across almost two metres, and demands

the viewer’s attention with its brilliant hues of turquoise. The figure-like shapes are surrounded by expressive dark lines, flowing

through and around, and finding both conception and cessation in a heaving, dark lump between the figures.

It speaks of human presence, and how this presence affects the environment – socially, politically, culturally, and historically. The Love

I Lost / Deep Tech is also an exploration of layers – what lies on the surface, and below the surface – and the ripples and tensions

between the two. Its very title alludes to this same relationship between visual art and music and how Selibe uses the two to explore

‘textures’ within society.

Another artwork that captures these ‘textures’ is The Long Road. Playing with contrasting primary colours – yellow and blue – figure-

like shapes also exist in this work, almost resisting the expressive dark lines that surround them as they lean back, towards the end of

the frame. Perhaps the expressive, dark, swirling lines speak of our unique human energy – our emotions and desires, our secrets,

pains and actions – pulling us forward along the long road ahead.

Selibe’s work articulates a remarkable ability to understand the many different aspects of human life and proves how music and the

visual arts are great tools for human expression. To the very core, his work communicates his exploration of ‘textures’ in sound, space,

colour, rhythm and life, and demonstrates how his very understanding of ‘textures’ – on all their surfaces – may be in aid of his

outreach programmes – those with which he heals through art.

This article was first published in ART AFRICA magazine, March 2018.

BROKEN LINE SERIES

2017


Broken Line Series 30, 2017


100x70cm



100x70cm



100x70cm

Broken Line Series ??, 2017


100x70cm

BROKEN CHORDS

2016


Broken Chords, 2016


165x135cm

ABSTRACT LYRICS

2016


Lyrics, 2016


100x70cm

Abstract Lyrics, 2016


100x70cm

Abstract Lyrics, 2016


100x70cm


Visual Jamming with artist Daniel ‘Stompie’ Selibe

Creative Feel – April 2017

Stompie Selibe’s artworks are sonorous, using mark-making and melodies in “an intuitive process of experimentation and discovery,

similar to jamming musically”, a method he refers to as “visual jamming”. With paint, spray paint and charcoal, he explores the world

around him; “the layers, complexities, textures, histories and often hidden processes of life”. Newspapers, sheet music and, more

recently, fabric, also make their way into his mix, “along with ‘overwriting’ with scribblings, drips, softly delicate line drawings and

wildly expressive brush marks”. Selibe has been working on his upcoming exhibition at Candice Berman Gallery “for over a year now.

The work is rooted in exploring how indigenous methods and styles, be it music, images of cultural gatherings, identities or beliefs can

be tools for connection, healing and development in the world of today; they give us new possibilities”. In these works, he uses “space

as a means of showing and creating the connections of rhythms and space, a way to show and introduce new ways to improvise using

mark making and melodies, new ways of creating our lives together”.

In 2015, Selibe was working on artworks centred on the metaphor of “the shadow and the scream”. Is this still relevant in his current

works? “This metaphor of the shadow, the darkness that trails us, is about how contorted we become; we are broken chords, within a

broken city, which is made up of many different rhythms. The work is still relevant to me as we are living in the shadow of the

magnificence of the music we all make, the rhythms and chords, our aspirations and dreams! The broken shadow is a look at how our

lifestyle of today impacts us, our experiences of living in the shadow of journeys, desires and aspirations for a better way of living

together.”

Jazz plays an important role in both his life and in his artistic output. In his creation of both music and visual art, Selibe uses “a similar

style of improvisation as a method of creation, of taking what is around me, creating new connections and associations, trying to travel

to places of memory and history, as well as new places still to be created”. “South African indigenous jazz creates a music that heals,”

he says. “Following in the tradition of religious and spiritual music, the indigenous music of SA helps people connect to parts of

themselves and others that are often not reached in this day and age. Music enables us to experience things in ways that go beyond

the intellect and words, it can bring us together, with ourselves and with others, with our histories and, most importantly, with our

creative and spontaneous ability to create anew each day; it frees our imagination and expresses the magic of being human. Working

with sounds that evoke memory, that evoke forces and energies greater than ourselves, jazz sound engages people in a different and

spontaneous kind of experience, one that refreshes, invigorates and connects with the magic and sacredness that both surrounds us

and of which we are an integral creative part. The freeing of this magic invokes the power to alter and enhance lives and to create our

wholeness.” Selibe plays a number of instruments; he lists the cajón drum; djembe; bamboo sax and mbira, “and anything that has an

interesting sound”.

In addition to his artistic talents, Selibe is also a qualified art counsellor: “Working with art and music as tools for healing is as much a

part of my artistic life as making a painting or making music. Working as an arts counsellor is another way of using the tools of

creativity and art to express the complexity, depth and mystery of being human. I think, as an artist, I have the opportunity and tools –

If not the responsibility – to address, explore and question what it means to be human today, to inquire about how and what we see,

to look more deeply and uncover what is beneath so many layers of our social conditioning, which can blind us or distort what we see.

I am an artist of post-apartheid South Africa, of a newly democratic South Africa, of a struggling multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-class

South Africa. So much of what we see and how we see is still shaped by apartheid, it will take many decades for that to change. I am

an African artist wanting to explore and show new ways of seeing African lives and our experiences. Too often in the art world, we do

not see images of ourselves, nor are the images we see of ourselves created by ourselves, for ourselves, nor are they about ourselves.

We are many voices, many rhythms, many colours, dimensions and textures, we are complex, complicated, often hidden or distorted

at the same time as we are, along with others, builders of a new country that needs new ways for all of us to live, grow and dream

together. I hope that my art can be an improvisational invitation to explore the timeless questions of how we must be, see, listen,

respond, interact, build community, heal, live, grow and create our future, together.”

SHEET MUSIC ORIGINAL

2015-2017


Sheet Music Original, 2016

Printing Ink on Sheet Music

38x27cm


Acrylic on Sheet Music

?? cm


Acrylic on Sheet Music

59x31cm


Mixed Media on Sheet Music

32x25cm

HANDMADE PAPER MUSICIAN

2015


Handmade Paper Musician 5, 2015

Acrylic on Handmade Paper

40x60cm

Handmade Paper Musician 6, 2015

Acrylic on Handmade Paper

40x60cm

ART AND SCIENCE

2014


Art and Science, 2014

Acrylic on Canvas

50x70cm

TELLING THE STORY

2014


Telling the Story, 2014

Mixed Media on paper

58.5x86.0cm

GOING TO WORK

2012


Going to Work, 2012


29,5x22cm

Their Bodies, 2012


31x21cm


Berman Contemporary is rooted in the growing understanding of the

cultural richness and diversity of South African contemporary art. The

gallery’s collection centres on a vibrant group of artists living and working

in South Africa.

Through studio visits, the gallery establishes connections to artists from all

walks of life whose unique artistic processes celebrate their historical and

cultural heritage and give voice to their complex societal realities, evoking

an active and interpretative experience for the viewer.

Berman Contemporary was established to promote the work created by

these local artists. The gallery further aims to establish a synergistic

network between South African artists and their global contemporaries,

many of whom evidently want to engage with the current South African

art scene – not only as observers, but as active analysts, experimenters

and contributors within this context and with this specific audience in

mind.

ARTIST PORTFOLIO STOMPIE SELIBE · 2019-09-10 · 2018 Black Soul by Ashraf Jamal, Cape Town,...

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Transcript of ARTIST PORTFOLIO STOMPIE SELIBE · 2019-09-10 · 2018 Black Soul by Ashraf Jamal, Cape Town,...