Willie Best

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Willie Bester (* 1956 in Montagu ) is a South African artist who is known for his installations made from materials and waste found in the area.

biography

Bester was born in 1956 in Montagu in what was then the Western Cape Province of South Africa. At the age of ten, he and his family were forced to move to a township . In order to be able to earn money for his family, he had to leave school after the sixth grade. In 1986 Bester had the opportunity to attend art classes at the Community Art Project in Cape Town , which was the trigger and the beginning of his artistic career.

Work and way of working

Willie Bester's socially influenced art has now reached not only a local but also an international audience. In his work, Bester mainly refers to historical events in South Africa and the country's art history and implements this visually by turning the city into a treasure trove for his work materials, which he then processes into paintings, assemblages and sculptures.

According to Bester, one of the most pressing concerns in his work is the search for the answer to the question of why it is so difficult for the people in his country to change their old habits. The people who thought they were superior during apartheid have not changed, so he wants to use history to find out what gives them the right to think that way. Through art, Bester tries, among other things, to find a way not to be disappointed and to be able to understand better.

Bester's house is also designed in accordance with his socially critical, artistic expression: as in all of his art, Bester expresses in the furnishings of his home that one can discover the pure energy and ingenuity that give his home country and its residents their unique character as soon as possible one only tries to look behind the clichés of everyday life.

Bester has won several prizes for his work and is represented with them in the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Johannesburg Art Gallery , the Pretoria Art Museum, the Contemporary African Art Collection in Paris and in numerous private collections inside and outside South Africa.

A work by Bester reached a price of £ 10,000 at a Sotheby’s auction .

Awards

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 1982 Forum, Cavendish Square, Cape Town
  • 1991 Gallery International, Cape Town
  • 1992 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
  • 1993 South African Association of Art, Cape Town
  • 1994 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
  • 1998 Emporain, Dakar, Senegal
  • 1999 Opere Recenti, Studio d'Arte Raffaelli, Trento, Italy
  • 1999 Archivio Della Scuola Romana, Introdotto da Achille Bonito Oliva, Rome
  • 2000 Arte Assortite, Turin
  • 2001 Center D'Art Contemporain, Brussels
  • 2002 SASOL Museum, Stellenbosch, South Africa
  • 2003 Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town
  • 2005 34 LONG, Cape Town
  • 2007 Montagu Museum
  • 2008 Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
  • 2009 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

Group exhibitions (selection)

  • 1989 Baxter Gallery, Cape Town
  • 1990 Gallery International, Cape Town
  • 1991 Operation Hunger Exhibition, Cape Town
  • 1991–1992 ZABALAZA FESTIVAL, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
  • 1992 Primart Gallery, Cape Town
  • 1993 Venice Biennale, INCROCI DEL SUD: An exhibition of works by 27 contemporary South African Artists
  • 1993–1994 INCROCI DEL SUD, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
  • 1994 UN ART CONTEMPORAIN D'AFRIQUE DU SUD, Galerie De L'Esplanade, La Defense, Paris
  • 1995 DIALOGUES OF PEACE, exhibition on the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, Palaise Des Nations, Geneva
  • 1996 Basel Art Fair, Basel
  • 1996 Contemporary Art from South Africa, House of World Cultures, Berlin
  • 1997 Galleria d'Art Moderna e Contemporanea di San Marino, San Marino
  • 1998 Biennale de l'Art Contemporian, Dakar
  • 1999 Claiming Art Reclaiming Space, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC
  • 2000 Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
  • 2001 Barcelona Contemporary Cultural Center, Barcelona
  • 2002 Passport to South Africa, Centro Culturale “Trevi”, Bolzano, Italy
  • 2003 Suidoos Festival, Peninsula Technikon 'Coexistence - Contemporary Cultural Production in South African' Rose Art Museum, USA
  • 2004 Africa Remix, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf
  • 2005 Hayward Gallery , London
  • 2006 Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
  • 2007 Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, Rocca di Castagnoli, Italy
  • 2009 34 LONG FINE ART, Cape Town

literature

  • House, Gloria, Alison Kenzie, and Art Gallery of Windsor: Willie Bester: apartheid laboratory: Art Gallery of Windsor, February 24-June 17, 2007. Art Gallery of Windsor, 2008.
  • Lee, Donvé: Willie Bester: art as a weapon. Awareness Publishing, 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.williebester.co.za
  3. ↑ [2]
personal data
SURNAME Dear Willie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Montagu (South Africa)