Picnic Solo Exhibition by Deborah Poynton at the Stevenson

The pleasure of a picnic is artfully explored

One of South Africa’s foremost contemporary artists is once again hosting a solo exhibition at the prestigious Stevenson Gallery. Known for her evocative subject matter and hyper-realistic painting style, Deborah Poynton’s Picnic will open on Thursday, 1 September, and will run until Saturday, 8 October 2016.

The push-pull juxtaposition of Poynton’s work is evident in the contrasting dichotomies she seeks to deconstruct playfully in her series, which veers between the real and the abstract, utilising the idea of a picnic as a platform for exploring pleasure. Poynton presents a sequence of beautifully portrayed picnic scenes, which expose the construct of the act of painting and the paradoxical freedom and containment inherent within this process. Both complete and incomplete, we glimpse the method behind the capturing, and the emotion and meaning we attribute to this; a hint into the illusion of painting and pleasure itself. 

Poynton had this to say about the show, “I have painted this series of ‘picnic paintings’ because I like the idea that both picnics and paintings are fantasies about pleasure. A picnic can be a metaphor for a perfect, imaginary place where beauty and pleasure abound. A painting is the same; a self-conscious framework, a way of being contained, while also tasting a bit of freedom.

In spite of their four edges, these paintings are places with undefined borders. They weave abstraction together with veins of realism, so that the abstract is made more real, and the realism is made more abstract, and it doesn't matter which is which because they are the same and neither is true. Like our conflicting desire for freedom and being held, they are two sides of the same coin. Paintings are not really free. You might paint a picture to try to express a sense of wonder, as a response to being alive. But in trying to paint it, you inevitably domesticate it.” 

Born in Durban in 1970, Poynton is now a Cape Town resident who has successfully exhibited around the world. This will be her eighth solo exhibition with the Stevenson Gallery. She will be staging a walkabout of her exhibition on Friday, 2 September 2016 at 12pm.

ENTRY TO THE STEVENSON GALLERY IN CAPE TOWN

The gallery is free to visit and its opening hours are from Monday to Friday from 9am until 5pm, and Saturday from 10am until 1pm. For more information, email sinazo@stevenson.info or call +27(0)21 462 1500.

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