William Kentridge’s solo show ‘Second-Hand Reading’ is comprised of self-constructed sound making machines, bronze sculptures as well as his iconic flipbook videos. The pages used in these films along with other drawings created by Kentridge adorn the walls of the exhibition space.
In a discussion regarding his work on display, Kentridge describes his approach to the theme as “taking sense and deconstructing it, taking nonsense and seeing if sense can be made from it” This is evident throughout the exhibition but is epitomized in his piece entitled ‘Making the Tree Search’ (Figure 1). From a distance the piece is perceived as a line drawing of a tree but as the viewer closes the distance it becomes apparent that the composition is a collage of a book pages covered in thick black lines. The pages are placed in a way that suggests growth as they spread out as the piece elevates. The way they are carefully configured connects these lines, forming the shape of a tree. There are phrases included throughout the piece that are cryptic in nature; some more so than others. The most obvious one being the title of the piece in the upper left corner. Like most of the featured work on display this piece is black and white with a minimal tonal range. The white of the pages tend to merge with the gallery wall making the black ink stand out even more.
The main feature of the show is the film that shares the title of the exhibition. It’s played on a loop in a dark secluded area of the gallery. Kentridge uses his trademark flipbook technique for this film; it’s accompanied by a song about a South African police massacre. Each frame uses a different page of the book; it appears long enough to be recognized as a different page but not long enough to connect to, alluding to the victims of the massacres. The sections in which he included his own figure give off the sense that he’s going nowhere even though it shows him walking, this may suggest that Kentridge is referencing mortality. Phrases such as “man is a walking clock” and “He that fled his fate” are shown throughout the video reiterating this theme.
For the most part the exhibition has a solemn feel to it although this mood is intermittently interrupted by the sounds created by the sculptures. The exhibition as a whole could be seen as a reciprocation of life; reminding us that when something alone may not make sense we should try to see the bigger picture because everything is connected in one way or another and although you might be facing a slump, so to speak, there’s a high probability that something exciting is right around the corner.
Figure 1 (Making the Tree Search)
