Restone Maambo’s first solo show of paintings, titled Levitation can currently be seen at Eclectica Contemporary until 1 October.
Employing a rich mix of media including painting, drawing and collage the works on exhibition explore how humans can transcend their physical constraints of existence through spiritual and mental processes. The works are uplifting, forward-looking and challenging of convention and the limitations put on us as humans.
In the artist’s own words:
Levitation is is a spiritual subject that goes beyond the five senses. It goes beyond what is usual, invoking the surrounding energy that can only be activated through media practices, experience, illusions and to some beliefs. It is the power in which objects are held aloft without mechanical support in a stable position. I believe that as humans we have the capability of going beyond the laws of nature when pushed or pushing to some limit. This can even result into some magical entity. It’s easiest for me to explain what I mean by this in visual terms – through my paintings – rather than explain this experience in words.
Art critic and theorist Andrew Lamprecht has written this about the exhibition:
In these paintings we see a careful interplay between objects and people; between space and identity; and between the physical realm and that of the spirit. Through force of concentration, with the application of his mind and his materials, and finally via painterly skill that has been practiced long and hard, Restone Maambo has done the seemingly impossible: he has defied the realm of the ordinary, the explicable and the mundane. In front of his paintings we are offered the possibility to float away from our current existence and enter into a deeper communion with him, the artist and with his subjects portrayed on the canvas. This, I would offer, is magical.
WHERE: Eclectica Contemporary, 69 Burg Street, Cape Town 8001
BIO:
Restone Maambo was born in Zambia, in 1980. His work is about considering life experience and the ways of then artistically interpreting life that surrounds him. His paintings often look back at his childhood. Maambo was first interested in illustrations found in newspapers and comics at the age of five. His passion for creativity and art lead him to move to Cape Town where he has since pursued his career, focusing on painting concerned with the human form and its presence in different environments.
