Whitechapel Gallery, London
By Hannah Hutchings-Georgiu
The talent of William Kentridge is astounding. The internationally acclaimed South African artist slides effortlessly between the roles of actor, designer, director and opera writer. With his latest exhibition, Thick Time, at the Whitechapel Gallery, his impressive eclecticism remains undiminished. Featuring six collaborative works, it unites various forms – from film and music to electronic machines – to create multimedia installations of monumental proportion. At once immersive and reflective, this is art at its most epic.
With his first installation, The Refusal of Time (2012), Kentridge’s vast artistic vision is granted free reign. It explores the concept of time, in all its philosophical and scientific complexity, through a five-channel video projected onto three walls. Initiated by the frantic beat of a metronome, Philip Miller’s cacophonous soundscape blasts out from four megaphones, only to usher in a troop of marching human figures. It tips Kentridge’s parade into the dark depths of the carnivalesque. Meanwhile, Kentridge’s artistic cosmos toys with our perception of time and place.
If the unbridled energy and dynamism of The Refusal of Time overwhelms, then Kentridge’s flipbook film, Second Hand Reading (2013), proves more meditative and melodious. It consists of moving images, drawn directly onto single pages of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and accompanied by evocative piano chords and singing from the South African activist Neo Muyanga. The result is a hypnotic combination of words and motifs that create, as Kentridge himself claims, ‘a knowledge of their own.’ 