Artists on my radar
Investing in art is the best thing money can buy
This morning was a morning. I’m thick in some bullshit sleep regression and I have major mum roid-rage (thats a scientfic thing) and my boil point was peaked way too early today. Now side-step - a bit of background. I’m Scottish so I say what I feel and because of my accent people often assume I am angry when in fact I am super passionate. I don’t like you, I’m OBSESSED with you. I can be blind angry at you but over it in the drop of knickers, but I don’t hate because I am to much of an empath and hate is a very strong word. So lets just state that before I let rip.
So here I was scrolling the ham (gram) this morning geering myself up for the day when I came across a post from a Sydney Gallery (won’t name names) posting a current show. When I saw the art work my coffee cup nearly hit the wall. It’s going to be very hard not to name names but this stuff really gets me going. Lets just say a near clone of one of the biggest artist in Europe with also a near identical instagram handle. The coffee hit and my mind WENT OFF!
I don’t understand how a ‘commercial’ gallery can knowingly promote and sell such blatant plagiarism. I mean there are 9 million Picasso clones out there but old boy Pabs is dead. This artist is not just alive and young but he’s fucking thriving. He’s peaking. I’ve watched his journey and he shot to the top FAST. Rather than get all angry on the internet at this young lad who by the way is also from Denmark (literal life copy and paste) I thought I would write about the real artist.
Insert Jack Kabangu.
Kabangu, born in Zambia in 1996 - lives and works in Copenhagen. He is a self taught visual artist who blew up the internet with his now, mostyl deleted Instagram posts of him in sick boy poses next to his fucking insane paintings.
When he first began posting I immediately wanted to own his work. I was trying to buy a piece of his directly but the galleries snapped up his work so quick that his artworks shot to 5 zeros overnight, and rightly so.
Like I said in previous posts, art is supposed to make you feel something and I needed to own his. There is something so unique about his style. It was so new, so unique and spoke so loud my stomach literally burst.
You can feel his heritage bursting through his paintings with the most insane use of colour. You could feel he was going to be someone so special.
I hate to pull comparisons to other artists but it helps signify the importance of his work. His artworks evoke old world graffiti/East Village, NY Basquiat but with his own contemporary expression.
He is world renowned - had exhibitions at Saatchi Gallery yet apparently Australian galleries have never heard his name. Because if they had why would they knowingly exhibit someone literally mimicking his paintings, his posts and his name?
‘Kabangu’s work is naturally investigative of psychological states, which is countered by his gutsy, gestural, freeform approach to artmaking. With his instantly recognisable style and a recurrent face/visage motif, Kabangu’s work is meant to speak to inexpressible desires and primordial human emotions.
Kabangu is similarly keen to investigate this illusory world. His richly applied surfaces suggest his desire to “go back in” and re-evaluate psychological states that fall outside of language or representation. Through his deep hues and surprising colour schemes, as well as his technique, which adopts a rigorous and impasto approach, we can almost sense Kabangu’s desire to plunge back into a fantastical world to illuminate his waking practice.’
- Saatchi Gallery
-
Is it important for you to create new modes of black representation?
Of course it is, but I think it's the same answer when you asked me if being Zambian is a part of my work. It's not something I am trying to do on purpose, but being the person I am or being in the environments I am in has had that effect.
I remember when I began doing this I searched for inspiration in people who looked like me, or who had the same interests as me. I think because of that, some people can see themselves in my work and maybe they think to themselves “I can do something the same way he has done it and maybe I can end up in the same place as him.” But I don't try to push that in my work.
The title of the exhibition is ‘Smiling Through The Pain’ which is poetic and beautiful. Your work feels quite uplifting and life-affirming. Where did the title for the exhibition come from?
I am happy that's what you take from the work. That's great. Well, I think in life there is a balance to everything. When I create something, I am more conscious about the process than the end result. Through this process, in life or in creative works, nothing goes straight: sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down. I feel that is what life is about. You need to feel pain and you need to feel that before you can feel very happy.
-