Foxy Production is pleased to present the inaugural North American solo exhibition of South African artist Bogosi Sekhukhuni. Sekhukhuni addresses the interplay between consumption and identity within a South African and global context. He looks at the ways we negotiate systems of technology, commodification, and belief. He researches the rational and speculative ideas we adopt to navigate a world of rapid social and technological change.

Sekhukhuni’s exhibition includes both new and recent works in a range of media, including video, drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Thus Saith the Lord (Overunity) (2015) is an interview with a visionary businessman who has combined faith with entrepreneurship, while its companion piece, Thus Saith the Lord (Prayer) (2015), shows his staff praying aloud in their work environment. These works were made collaboratively by the artist group NTU.

The artist’s drawings make links between biological and mystical structures. Fossils that trace the development of the vertebrae reference the spine as an organizing system, while a text-based drawing contains Kabbalistic words that are inter-connected within a diagrammatic scheme.

Consciousness Engine 2: absentblackfatherbot (2013) is a two-screen video installation based on the artist’s Facebook messenger conversations with his estranged father. He reconstructs the encounters using voice software and animated simulations of himself and his father.

Sekhukhuni describes his Dream Diary Season 2 (2017) as “primarily conversations that I have with myself about the nature of a collective consciousness.” He plays a character who represents the post-apartheid, “born-free” generation of millennials, or “indigo children,” the New Age idea of super-talented progeny.

His sculpture is based upon a popular high school experiment that describes planetary space and time. It visualizes gravity, dark matter, and negative space.

His singular painting of a bed refers to the aspirational appeal of home decor advertisements and their link between consumption and identity.

Sekhukhuni is a founding member of the “tech-health artist group” NTU and has worked with the digital art collective, CUSS Group. His most recent project is a “visual culture bank and research gang” called Open Time Coven, which investigates “emergent technologies and repressed African spiritual philosophies.”

Bogosi Sekhukhuni (Johannesburg, 1991) studied Visual Arts at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Recent exhibitions include Afrotopia, Rencontres de Bamako: African Biennale of Photography, Bamako, Mali; Art/ Afrique, le nouvel atelier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, and Simony Summit 2010, Stevenson, Johannesburg, South Africa (all 2017); 2nd Kampala Biennale, Uganda; 9th Berlin Biennale, Germany (NTU with Cuss group), and Dak’Art, Dakar Biennale, Senegal (all 2016). In 2015 Sekhukhuni’s work was included in the 89+ Prospectif Cinéma program at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Film Will Always Be You: South African Artists on Screen at Tate Modern, London; Co-Workers – Network as Artist at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Filter Bubble at the LUMA Foundation’s Westbau in Zürich, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets. With CUSS Group, Sekhukhuni was included in Private Spaces: Art After the Internet at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw in 2014.

CREDITS
Installation photography: Charles Benton.

• Farago, Jason. "Bogosi Sekhukhuni," The New York Times. 30 Mar. 2018: C15.
• Ludel, Wallace. "Critics’ Picks: Bogosi Sekhukhuni" Artforum. 13 Apr. 2018. Web.
• "Bogosi Sekhukhuni at Foxy Production." Time Out New York. 26 Mar. 2018. Web.
• Guyanese, Rob. "Art Beat: 6 Exhibitions to See in April." Alphasixty. 2 Apr. 2018. Web.
• Chamberlain, Colby. "Bogosi Sekhukhuni." Artforum. Summer 2018, 56, 10: 306-307.