Samson alludes to the ‘nasty business of betrayal’

THIRTEEN PIECES OF SILVER. An exhibition of paintings by Cinga Samson. At Blank Gallery until Saturday. LUCINDA JOLLY reviews.

THERE is a dark, sticky quality about Cinga Samson’s paintings, both figuratively and literally. It’s a quality first introduced metaphorically by the exhibitions title, 13 Pieces of Silver. These are not the specific 30 pieces of silver that reference the biblical Judas’s betrayal of Christ, but nevertheless they allude to the nasty, tenebrous business of betrayal. And within the context of betrayal suggest the high cost to both parties, the betrayed and the betrayer.

It’s to the literal stickiness of betrayal, Samson’s dark and highly varnished surfaces – the artists signature trait – that we are drawn to like flies to honey. We approach the paintings from this exhibition a series of five, titled Lord forgive me for my sins ‘cause here I come, and the series of seven figure paintings, titled Bestow: confer or present (an honour, right or gift) curious about what their molasses darkness may conceal or reveal.

But a curious thing happens the moment we begin to examine their glowing subject matter; the Madonna blue of a spray of flowers, the ornate patterned backgrounds or winding sheet like ribbons of fabric, we find that having penetrated the darkness, the shine of the gallery lights or sunlight from the window catches the sheen of varnish, and now, instead of darkness the glare throws us off course. And we are back at the beginning.

And so we begin again and again finding ourselves doing this strange dance, bobbing back and fro, hands shielding our eyes from the glare. It is intriguing, if not distracting conceptual device. For, as Samson says, “When I create an artwork, I want the results to feel secret, almost holy and distant”. That they are.

As in the case of traditional Still life’s Samson’s still life, is not just a vase of pretty “blomme”.

Historians inform us that still life as a genre begun in the Netherlands in the 1600’s. Often the study commented on morality and qualities such as, temperance or vanity through the inclusion of symbolic elements for example, the lily for purity.

The Baroque artist Michelangelo Caravaggio who introduced the secular into the sacred by deliberately painting the dirty feet of the poor pilgrim, the use of a drowned ‘whore’ in scarlet for his Mary Magdalene, so that ordinary people could relate more easily to the realm of the spiritual, had another take on the still life.

Although painted exquisitely, in his still life basket of fruit, or the still life that graces the last super in his painting titled Supper at Emmaus, there are no pristine apples or perfect grapes for him.

Instead he gave us the bloom of must on the grape, a shrivelled raisin on the bunch, a wasp stung apple and a sun damaged vine to suggest the demise of all living things.

Twentieth century photographer Robert Mapplethorpe knew how to bring out the dark side of flowers. In his hands the sheer artificial perfection of his threatening blooms are closer in feel to the leather and bondage of sadomasochistic practices than a pretty garden.

Before Samson’s still lifes came into being, contemporary South African artists, such as painter Helmut Starcke and multidisciplinary Andrew Putter also relooked at traditional still lifes. Putter’s photographic series Hottentots Holland: Flora Capensis in collaboration with photographer Tony Meintjies and floral artist extraordinaire Christopher Peters puts an imaginative spin onto colonialism posing the question, “what if roles of the Dutch and the Khoekhoe were reversed, might the Dutch have learnt to make these kinds of compositions from the Khoekhoe?” Using a charred vase of flowers juxtaposed with the date of Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival Starcke comments on colonialism with his In the Beginning.

Samson’s luminous still life’s which have a richness that contradicts the fact that they were painted from plastic flowers, inexpensive vases and cloth fragments also reference Europe and comment on “the frustrations of young black Africans and their sense of displacement within the nationalistic narrative of social cohesion”.

Under his beautiful surfaces lurks “a pervading sense of invasion from both ‘outsiders’ and visible remnants of the past”. The reconstruction of historic paintings particularly in photography in is a popular current global phenomenon, whether it is for commercial aims or social comment.

In its commercial role, take Annie Leibovitz’s baroque extravaganzas or explorer of popular culture Francesco Vezzoli‘s photograph of pop star Nicki Minaj as 18th century French courtesan. Photographers Hu Jiemings and Gérard Rancinan both reconstructed Delacroix’s a maritime disaster The Raft of the Medusa. The painting has been interpreted by historians as violating two codes of the time.

Firstly it is seen to have “no ideological justification for human suffering” and secondly a work of its size was usually sanctioned by the church or state. Jiemings uses his photograph to comment on current consumerism and excess hedonism of youth and Rancinian on the plight of immigrants in their attempt to find a better life in wealthy first world countries. Samson’s series Bestow: to confer or present (an honour, right or gift) is a far more menacing version of the still lifes.

Here Munchkin men in dark suits – parodying portraits of the powerful and wealthy sitters of the Dutch and Flemish masters – gather conspiratorially in groups, pairs or single, as if involved in some obscure ritual in a murky atmosphere.

Samson is another to watch. Go see.

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