Jane Alexander

Jane Alexander

Jane Alexander • Hatje Cantz

ISBN-10: 3775711899 · ISBN-13: 978‑3775711906 · 2003

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Completeness 51

Cover quality: good

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The South African artist Jane Alexander has been awarded the lucrative DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Sculpture 2002. According to the jury's reasoning, "Jane Alexander gives shape to the fragility of a multi-cultural society (...). Her sculptures do not ask for acknowledgement; they exist in a no man´s land where the differences between victims and perpetrators are blurred and without meaning." This is the first extensive publication dedicated to this sculptor´s work, an oeuvre which "leads deeply into the political and historical problems of the African continent." The life-sized figures made from fibreglass, wood and clay, and the so-called "found objects" with their clothes, hats and glasses seem astonishingly naturalistic. At the same time, however, this very naturalism is thwarted by most sculptures wearing eye bandages or animal masks, or by their looking into an incomprehensible world with animal eyes - "for the blind and for animals, white and black are not the categories that determine their consciousness. The deformation thus reveals an utopian moment." (Renate Wiehager) (German edition available ISBN 3-7757-1189-9) The artist: Jane Alexander, born 1959 in Johannesburg. Studied Fine Arts at the University of Witwaterstrand, Johannesburg. Various prizes and awards. Numerous exhibitions, among them participation in the 1995 Venice Biennale. Presently, Jane Alexander is a member of the teaching staff at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Kapstadt, where she lives and works.

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