“Have I ever felt strange suddenly being myself?” I thought after leaving Simphiwe Ndzube’s exhibition, “Chorus” at BLUM. If I integrate all the parts of myself into the world I believe in and want to see the most, maybe I too will find ordinary enchantment. Perhaps I will reach magic. Ndzube’s vibrant and vigorous figurative paintings and drawings of groups and of individuals represent a distinct maturation of his past works.  Looking around the room, I find myself surrounded by his exuberant singers. The faces of his figures have a saccharine and matter-of-fact Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head construction while being placed in an indeterminate landscape without verifiable time. They conjure a world between worlds, seemingly salvaging personages from past subjects, stories, and history. With greater control, he continues to build a lexicon of mythologies arising from his respective experiences growing up in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Utilizing both absurdity and divinity, Ndzube’s mode of storytelling is delivered through Magic Realism. This is compelling not only as a narrative system familiarly catalyzed from postcolonial literature by destabilizing dominant forms of storytelling, but also as a device for highlighting a range of phenomena that can feel impossible to reconcile individually, let alone intertwined.  Family, joy, love, pain, the individual, the community, unconscious desires, political and racialized atrocities, collective beliefs and more are submerged in Ndzube’s surfaces. Although it’s not a new way of illustrating stories, Simphiwe Ndzube’s world of devotion provides ground for traversing everyday moments of cosmic pleasure and affliction, which protect and suspend vital elements of life that require acceptance, not explanation. 

Blum
2727 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

On view through December 16, 2023