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Stephen Garan’anga Visual Art
“Elaborations is an exploration of three-dimensional and two-dimensional language consisting of unique approaches to pictorial space. “This exploration is inspired by the need to make alternative socio-political statements that have always been shared verbally or as written statements in our contemporary times. his need to execute with painstaking attention arose to make the very same contemporary grievances and comments collectable and unforgettable”.

This was a statement by Munyaradzi Mazarire as he tried simplify in words his province of sophisticated few that lies outside our normal way of thinking that he is currently showcasing at Gallery Delta Foundation for Arts and the Humanities.

‘Elaborations’ is the theme of his third solo offering that matured as a follow up to his ‘Redefining Space’ at Dzimbanhete Arts Interactions Trust barely eight months ago after a successful three months artist-in-residence programme at the cultural resource centre.

He is showing too some of the work he created out of the residence and before. Some of his featured work include a series of ‘Wasted energy’ I and III, a series of ‘Landscapes’ II to IV, ‘Empty news’, ‘Identity’ as series of I, IV and V, ‘Open Window’ series of II and III, ‘Empty Promises’ series of II and III, ‘Words’ series of I to III, card prints which include ‘Anthem’, ‘Death of Ubuntu’ and ‘Identity’, ‘Ndari’, ‘Bira’, ‘Zviuya Zvirimberi’, ‘Chair’, ‘Family’, ‘Waiter’ to mention some of the forty pieces on show.

Mazarire has fascination with esoteric space and perspective, presenting illusions and subliminal constructions which dissolve the limitation of actual space and order. He says his quest is to present his audience with sculpture that is fashioned in the two dimensional reality.

“I prefer calling the resulting objects of visual awareness ‘2.5 art’ because it is a fusion of two and three-dimensional artistic techniques. Or, can I say, my art exist somewhere between the third and second dimension?

“You can call it ‘Zest art’ because the works appear twisted when viewed from a different angle, awarding my art a certain level of visual excitement. I have respect too for craft skills that, I believe, enable the exploration of diverse artistic techniques, which provide the artist with a problem solving approach, to reach any desired end,” he said.

‘Words I’ is an illusion of an empty right side up fairly large open cardboard box with its surfaces wrapped up in local daily and weekly newspapers.

The box appears so real, full of words and highly indulging, but it is barely 15centimeters thick in cardboard and discarded newsprint shrewdly glued together.

It alludes to the endless words of comfort people are fashioned with especially in politics and by other offices of influence that never materialise.

An impression in the same making conveying a similar message comes in ‘Empty Promises II’. It is a direct wide open to the vertical axis life size empty briefcase but full of words on the surfaces of stuck newsprint.

It represents all the promises that the masses have had from authorities and politicians that never came to pass. The artwork is just 65 x 81 x 7centimeter in size but carries the messages of billions.

‘Empty news’ is constructed on a thin plywood board, again in the usage of various local and weekly discarded newspapers and shrewdly glued together. Hung on a clean white wall, it gives an illusion of an aged full size wheelbarrow wrapped with newspapers placed at a distance in the middle of a resettled farmer’s yard. The empty wheelbarrow piece barely three centimetres thick represents the falsehoods news that is frequently published by various print media houses according Munyaradzi.

Other pieces in similar making are the ‘Identity’ series composing impressions of a pair of formal shirts and pants from afar that everybody locally wears bearing identities of other nations. The series brings to the fore the identity crises we have the former colonised countries especially here in Africa where we strive in every way to imitate the former colonial master’s world.

‘Re-Defining Space’ reveals the master illusionist’s draftsmanship skills in bringing the presence of natural three dimension while making it feel like it is appearing on two dimensional surface, challenging us to what we actual see as opposed to what we think we see.

Here he carves a fairly big ordinary table at linear perspective angles and placed it a few centimetres from a plain white wall.

Ahead of it up the wall is a constructed impression of another similar table appearing as if it is far in a distance presenting an illusion of two tables placed far apart at similar angles.

The same impression is repeated on such pieces as the ‘Open Window’ series of two in which he constructed using dark wood for opened six pane and three pane house windows.

Munyaradzi Mazarire was born in 1969 and went through formal art training at the Harare Polytechnic and Chinhoyi University of Technology. He has participated in numerous high profile exhibitions at home and internationally. His current show will shut its doors to the public at the end of August 2015.