Interview with FRINGE
FEBRUARY 2020
What have you been doing since your last show?
Experimenting with notions of horror and humor, and thinking about what makes for good composition. Spending some time with my dealer from Europe just to kind of get the feel for the market there, like in Germany where things have gone quite well. We had two exhibitions in a great big schloss, it’s a public venue with the ability to host private exhibitions also.
But on a more serious note, I’ve been like in between issues in my life. On the one hand the drive to be an artist comes completely naturally to me, but on the other hand it sometimes feels like a wart that’s stuck on me somehow, that I need to get off.
I suppose that is why I went for the anonymity thing in the first place because I don’t really know if I’m cut out to be a major player in the art world as it is.
Well, what is it that puts you off? Have your reasons for being anonymous stayed consistent throughout the last five years that you’ve been producing work under this pseudonym?
Obviously, this way I don’t have to make any overtly personal or political statements. Although there are some who say that all art is overtly personal and political. But in Jo’burg it all becomes very personal and that is something I am happy to stay away from: the social media and the need to talk about my work endlessly. That is what my gallery, the Daville Baillie Gallery is there for. I have the privilege of being able to just close myself off and dream up these epic paintings and sculptures. Sometimes I feel like the mad professor…
Let’s talk about what that is, these days, as you prepare for your third solo exhibition titled NO SERIOIUSLY.
Paintings about the size of a bedroom window. The proportion is very important to me because I do see my work in a domestic setting. I’m aware that they play with the decorative element of pop art but I also want them to be unsettling in a way that you can’t pin down. I want my pictures to remind you that you are alive, here and now, in the early 21stCentury that is really still recovering from the 20thCentury.
How does that work? Is it because what you’re doing is showing us the icons of our youth?
No, not only that. Yes, and that of course. But I have a feeling that this whole comic world seems to come across as something true to us because we are brought up with it from such a young age. And it is so much a part of our concentration and distraction as young people that we take it as a kind of basic truth. We just believe in the power of popular culture and we buy into it without asking questions about it. But at the same time it lies on the floor and gets trampled on in newspapers and comics. I like it when it gets elevated to a higher form of art – and that’s why I think I fit in with the Daville Baillie Gallery that has this iconography going on from artists all over the world.
And is that why the show is called NO SERIOUSLY?
Yes, for sure. It’s called NO SERIOUSLY because I am able to take all these heroes and anti-heroes that we don’t take very seriously and put them on the walls, framing them in the context of a more serious art.
BIOGRAPHY OF FRINGE
Born in 1976 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the artist who goes by the pseudonym Fringe was educated in the Natal Midlands. Thereafter he studied design in Cape Town.
After plying his trade with various agencies, in 2003 he shifted his focus to art production, experimenting with notions of objectivity and subjectivity within the confines of the gallery space.
In 2015, after more than a decade of success in advertising, Fringe moved to New York to absorb an alternate train of thought. With a newfound understanding of the importance of communication through street art, in 2016 he returned to South Africa to begin creating unique artworks based on pop symbols, advertising campaigns and graffiti techniques.
The year 2017 was a breakthrough for Fringe. In April he held his first solo exhibition at the Daville Baillie Gallery in Norwood, Johannesburg. And he began to gain wider recognition beyond South Africa and, with the support of an agent in Luxembourg he found an international base. His work has begun to sell in London and Amsterdam.
In September 2017 an artwork by Fringe was sold in London on an auction to benefit the African Ukuthemba Foundation. The work was auctioned by the Irish celebrity Graham Norton, and in the process the art of Fringe received extensive exposure abroad.
In 2018 he held a sold-out Solo exhibition with Desom Wine Estate in Luxembourg to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Porsche.
Fringe held his second, sold out solo exhibition, titled Don’t Blink, at the Daville Baillie Gallery at Victoria Yards in Johannesburg, in September 2018.
In October 2019 Fringe held a solo exhibition at the prestigious Schloss Monaise in Trier, Germany and a second artwork was auctioned in London and sold for a record high.
