Christo Coetzee - The Safest Place is the Knife's Edge

The first exhibition of the work of the late Christo Coetzee in 35 years, this retrospective focuses on how he became a leading exponent of abstract expressionism both in South Africa and abroad. In particular the exhibition looks at Coetzee's involvement in the 1950s and 1960s in the radical Japanese Gutai movement who rejected traditional art styles and favoured the performative destruction and reinvention of artworks. Coetzee's most notorious Gutai moment came in 1975 when after opening a new exhibition in Cape Town he later returned to the gallery to slash his paintings. Following the shocking destruction of his own works Coetzee then went on to reinvent them, repairing the damaged work with rope and shoelaces.

The exhibition brings together 120 artworks on loan from private collections and collections owned by academic institutions including prominent works like Butterfly Lighting in a Diamond, a mixed media canvas from 1960 that was exhibited in 1961 at the exhibition The Art of Assemblage in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York.

Sat Nov 17 at 11:00 Exhibition curator Wilhelm van Rensburg  leads an walkabout of the exhibition followed by a Kamishibai (a form of Japanese street theatre and storytelling) interpretation of the works by the award-winning actress Jemma Kahn.