Niklas Zimmer, portfolio: VT
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Transcript of Niklas Zimmer, portfolio: VT
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VT
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During a stint of lecturing at the Michaelis School of
Fine Art at University of Cape Town, curator Andrew
Lamprecht asked me if Id like to produce some work for
a Tretchikoff show he was putting together up the road at
Salon91. I immediately had a head full of ideas and gotto work, writing, drawing and making calls. I looked at all
the reproductions of VTs work I could get my hands on,
revisiting many memories of experiencing these images
for the rst time in the hallways, kitchens and garages
of the homes of future friends and acquaintances in
Cape Town, moments of rst contact for me as a 21-
year old German art student saying: no way, thats so
out there! The common ground of unadulterated Kitsch
was broad in these faded prints, and I quickly learntthat their off-beat iconicity in local arty circles provided
a reference point if one wanted to express something
about unashamed, politically incorrect sentimentality in
post-94 South Africa.
Vladimir Tretchikoff was by no means a world-class
painter, but he managed to sell print-reproductions of his
paintings on a truly global scale. Despite their technical
and aesthetic shortcomings, many of his paintings are
very striking, and possess a kind of heartfelt, passionate
engagement with sentimental beauty that is not
easily forgotten. Without doubt, many of Tretchikoffs
images display many of the typical markers of the
essentialising worldview of his time and place, and quite
unselfconsciously refer to sexist and racist perceptions
of the exotic other as noble savage. Despite all
this, somehow the fact that VT remained relatively
isolated from and shunned by the local art world,
who in including him into their midst would have had
to face their own level of relative complicity with thesocio-political status quo, retrospectively gives him a
kind of alleviating outsider-status. A foreign cast away
in the time of the second world war, Tretchikoff, once
settled here as a former set painter, now full-time
studio artist, was relatively disregarded by the local art
world. He started making a lot of money overseas with
affordable reproductions of his images. In this sense,
he ew over the cuckoos nest of Apartheid segregation
even from within the high security walls of Cape Townswealthy southern suburbia. This voelvry1 status in the
art world (and an autobiography titled Pigeons Luck2)
combined with his unabashed - and in a strange sense
unpretentious passion for kitsch, make him very
sympathetic to local and international audiences, even
to those leaning more to the left. In effect it could be
argued that if the local narrative around Tretchikoff had
been one of general acceptance through the course of
the Apartheid years, nobody would believe his kitsch tobe so cool today.
With my photographs, I want to address some of the
essentialist qualities of Tretchikoffs work by engaging it
visually (rather than being conceptually clever about it),
using some of the vocabulary of photography: a green
VT
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Birth of Venus on show at Salon91 (detail)
Lady is not lit green using gels, but her skin is painted
green (many other colours, too my makeup artist
considers herself a painter, the models skin her canvas),
and the water dripping down her form is an incredibly
expensive squeeze of 4 tubes of inverted Jojoba-Oil lip
gloss, and so forth. Tretchikoffs paintings are deeply
informed by the photographic idiom: strong ash side-
lighting, depth-of-eld effects, over-saturation, double
exposure, frozen motion effects, to name but a few of the
most obvious. By restaging his imagery and in a sense
re-photographing his source material, I am attempting to
step in between him and his work, and pre-empt rather
than re-enact some of that which he achieved over the
past 40 years, and which may (no longer) hold true or sit
so comfortably with us today. I hope that the humour and
respect in this mode of working show through my nal
work, and that is enjoyable as well as thought provokingto look at.
Every work of classical music needs to be interpreted
anew when it is played. The curious and clichd ubiquity
of reproductions of Tretchikoffs imagery in the worlds
antique stores and jumble sales heightens the sense of
mystery around the originals. I have been jamming with
reproductions as source material to create new originals
that interrogate their specic socio-cultural context from
behind, from in-between, from within.
New work in the series was show at the new MUSEUM
gallery at Upper East Side Hotel, Woodstock.
Cape Town, November 2010
1 Afrikaans for Vogelfrei (Ger.) or Outlawed (Eng.)
2 Tretchikoff, Vladimir: Pigeons Luck, 1973, Collins
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Zulu Girl + Cape FishermanC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
Zulu Girl,C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
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BeatnikC-Print (Diasec); 100 x 41,5 cm (7 + 2 AP)
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Birth of VenusC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
Birth of Venus + Woman with Flower IC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
Birth of Venus + Woman with Flower IIC-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
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Birth of Venus + The Pumpkin Seller
C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
Birth of Venus + Melon Eater
C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
Birth of Venus + The Herb Seller
C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm
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ResurrectionC-Print (Diasec); 100 x 72,3 cm (5 + 2 AP)
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Swazi Mother
C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP)
Kwela Boy
C-Print (Diasec); 38,5 x 50 cm (7 + 2 AP.)
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[email protected] 536 5152
Niklas Zimmer is a German-South African artist and musician working in photography, sound and performance.He was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1975, went to prep school in Maseru, Lesotho, and matriculated in BadHonnef, Germany. He lives and works in Cape Town. He holds an Honours degree in Fine Art from University ofCape Town and a BA in education from University of Cologne. After three years of being Head of Department,teaching Visual Arts at the German International School in Cape Town, he is now part-time lecturing intheory and discourse of art, critical studies, as well as giving workshops in video, sound and photography attertiary institutions in Cape Town and Stellenbosch. He also works as an independent photographer and drummer,as well as being employed by the Centre for Popular Memory (UCT) as digitisation manager and audio specialist.He is engaged in research for his masters dissertation on Jazz Photography in Cape Town. As Is, his musical
ensemble with Manfred Zylla, Garth Erasmus and Brendon Bussy performs free-form music in various culturalvenues and contexts in Cape Town (Dada South?, Breytenbach Sentrum, Edge of Wrong, Alliance Francaise,Erdmann contemporary, Serialworks, Gradex10).
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all reference images on this page courtesy of the Tretchikoff
foundation [www.vladimirtretchikoff.com]
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all reference images on this page courtesy of the Tretchikoff
foundation [www.vladimirtretchikoff.com]
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Without these special individuals invaluable input and hard work this series of photoswould never have been possible to make, therefore a very special thank you to:
Natasha Swift: reference images [www.vladimirtretchikoff.com]
Penny Youngleson: stylingSamantha Kaye: makeup [www.samanthalaurakaye.com]Yotam Sendak: lighting [www.yotamsandak.com]Bella Knemeyer: art dept.Lorraine: model ILauren: model II [Trigger models, CBD]Kassie: model IIIChuma: model IV
Barry White: studio space [Snap Studios, Woodstock]Pieter Badenhorst: lighting equipment [www.photohire.co.za]
Paul Hudson: post production [www.settdigital.co.za]
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