Lehlogonolo Mashaba makes a Noise at Artspace

Artspace presents Lehlogonolo Mashaba’s first solo exhibition entitled Noise on February 2, 2013.

In his debut body of work, Mashaba focuses on 4 main motifs: memory; remembrance; forgetting; and recording.

Noise: In common use any unwanted sound; it manifests as "snow" on a television or video image.

High noise level can block, distort, change or interfere with the meaning of a message in humans, animals and electronic communication.

“My work highlights the impact that memory, remembrance and forgetting has on how our brains digest information and the complications that it has when attempting to make sense of things”, says Mashaba.

“In Noise I address communication as a tool that assists us to convey information by merging imagery and text.” he says.

“The brain is a miraculous organ with functions that are integrated, and are dependent on one another in order to be efficient. These brain functions are; memory, remembrance and forgetting. The interaction between the points of this triangle differs from person to person, and often interpretation can masquerade as memory. It takes me ages to comprehend information. I find when I read, the text becomes blurry and grey and I eventually get lost in the reading process”, says Mashaba.

One of the other running motifs in Mashaba’s work is his continuous use of cell phone texts and printed words.

“I use the texts collected from people’s mobile phones to construct figures and bodies. I combine different information and words from various texts sources. Texts from the Bible play an integral role in construction meaning in my work. This book is considered by many as divine knowledge and insight, and yet is a most ambiguous text that has been subject to interpretations that have had global ramifications.” says Mashaba.

Mashaba not only draws from his personal archive but also draws influence from the media by extracting texts from newspaper articles.

“I acknowledges that we as human beings are a product of what we eat – food or words,” he comments.

His work concentrates on the indeterminate. In life you cannot really define things completely and by using as many lines as possible while encrypting text, the work becomes heavily blurred. The more layered the text, the more incomprehensive it is. “This is reminiscent of the fact that we can’t really establish the original conception of human kind, except from what we read about it. It is in this context that noise is interpreted.

“We are figures who are dependent on knowledge and learning to make us whole and able to relate to our lives, communicate and identify things. Should the information we learn get distorted, then we run the risk of losing the original content and thus unable to make sense of things, the confusion will then manifest itself as juxtaposed letters against portraits obscuring a clear view.”

Mashaba was born in 1983 in Kwa-Thema, Johannesburg. He began his art education at the Funda Center in 2003. He later obtained a certificate in Design and Printmaking in 2004. In addition to creating his own work, Mashaba is a former collaborative printer specialising in intaglio, relief, monotype and silkscreen at Artist Proof Studio. He assisted in printing works for established artists, such as Marcus Neustetter and Sandile Goje.

Mashaba has participated in numerous group exhibitions in South Africa, France, and United States of America. His work has been part of the Artists Proof Studios both at the Johannesburg Art Fair since 2008.

The exhibition opens at 11pm February 2, 2013 and closes on March 2, 2013 at Artspace, 1 Chester Court, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Rosebank.

Please join us at the opening for a glass of wine and to meet the artist.

Contemporary curator Andile Magengelele, will be opening the exhibition.

Gallery hours Tues – Fri 10h00-17h30

Saturday 10h00-15h30