Stephen Garan’anga Visual Art
Today the modern visual art world has been infested by numerous fine art practitioners turning into performing artists especially at official exhibition openings. Regularly it used to be another art genre group being invited to perform as the entertainment package or just a soothing lyrical free instrumental music audible in the background.

As earth ages and performances being hijacked by fine art practitioners, the world is at the mercy of harsh reality.

Their performances are so complex and often abstract in totality to the audiences. This is what the artists do, it is what they want, and it is their nature as the creative lot of this world.

Cruising into the fine art performance juggle is dynamic young visual artist Admire Kamudzengerere who elegantly performed in collaboration with a trio of beautiful young ladies in the amphitheatre recently at Gallery Delta Foundation of Art and the humanities at the opening of his second solo exhibition. Officiated by His Excellency, the Swiss Ambassador to Zimbabwe Luciano Lavizzari, a regular at the established art space as his embassy has been a numerous art exhibition sponsor at the venue in 2014 and was ecstatic by the introductory play about pigeons of the show “Antipathy” in which he became a participant tagging a message on one of the two live birds that were released into a cool drizzling night to return to the artist home with tagged messages.

Admire Kamudzengerere’s performance began with three ladies just sat on scattered various local daily newspapers with three of their respective banners inscribed in bold headlines immediately behind them as Admire narrated how intelligent the fowl are as they use the earth’s magnetic field with their tiny magnetic sensors located on either side of the protruding point of their backs to travel unimaginable distances at some of the fastest speeds ever recorded in the bird kingdom.

As he drew the wondering pair of the many he keeps at home out of a tiny cardboard box, the ladies began giggling making disturbing noise on their newsprint turf right in front of a mixture of an audience.

He moved about with a multi grey bird in his gentle hands continuing with his narration which included how the pigeons never get lost from their original roosting places and how they have been used as messengers especially recently in warring nations like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and how people were forbade to keep them.

He said one has to take away a pigeon from its home to wherever and tag it with a message then release it and it will find its way home.

He talked about how passionate some people were in other countries that they shoot falcons on site as they prey immensely on them and in other countries despise them like unwanted pests as they are all over cities tainting everything with their droppings.

Whilst he was still at it, the giggling ladies started going up the terraces into the audiences dragging a coloured ribbon each.

The performance completed the release of the messengers but the black and white bird returned shortly before the audience even terminated their hand clapping in applause.

Maybe it was too dark, cool and wet for it since it had come in a tiny box or its earth magnetic sensors had let it down.

The semi abstract work in the exhibition of paintings and graphics was dominated by small ink drawings and “Portrait Series”(I – XXVII) of monotypes. Some of the magnificent paintings on canvas are fairly huge with such pieces as “African Odalisque”, “Charging Bull”, ‘Nyamututa”, “The Last Supper” and “The Rape” to highlight a few. The silkscreen prints are masterly done with such titles as “Fishing”, “See Through” (I-III), “First Shoe Last Shoe” “Flight”, and “Fishing in Amsterdam” to mention some. Amsterdam has been the city of his recently completed art residency of the past two years at Rijksakademie Van Beedlende Kunst.

Admire has been an exhibiting artist since his early days in year 2001 to be a seasoned artist he is today.

In his interesting statement he said “I see all things. I think many things. My mind is transfixed by the clock; to study a physical impossibility; there is the need for virtual reality. The game is lost before it has begun. I crave to feel. With my forehead I knock unconscious of my being.

“I tread haunted with historical and socio-political nightmares. I find solace in my paint brush. High on turpentine I wield and weave my colours on canvas. Like butter I spread myself thin. This drug has taken hold of me.

“The smell of oil and the sight of colour become an addiction I live and deal with every single day. Like an embryo I keep searching to the sound and rhythm of my heart. Amidst the life I leave traces of my troubles and tribulations.

“My work takes over as a reflection of what I am undergoing at that moment. My personal struggle I give to you. It is my next breath. It is all in me. It is all of me. I detach myself from the intellectual, physical, and emotional agony and allow the work to freely spring into life of its own”.

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