Portage ,
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Anmerkung : Portage is a concertina-type fold out structure of assembled torn sheets of matte black paper collaged onto found sheets from an encyclopaedia, the Le Nouveau Larousse Illustré (1901-1914). The sheets from the encyclopaedia were collaged onto eighteen connected support paper panels allowing for a fold out book format known as a leporello. The first seventeen pages of the work were published as the first pages of a catalogue for Kentridge’s travelling exhibition in the USA.The artist, having returned to the family home where he grew up in Johannesburg, was confronted with a library left by his father. Needing shelves for his own library, he began recycling the pages of redundant books to use for drawings and editioned work. As Kate McCrickard puts it, “Kentridge’s torn matte black paper creates punchy silhouette figures that share the boldness of his charcoal drawings. The opaqueness of these figures keys us directly into the parallel world of shadow”.Prior editions created by Kentridge using torn black collaged fragments depicting shadow procession imagery were De Peccato Originali on found sheets from the original book in Latin published circa 1750. Thereafter he made a work by taking apart a damaged copy of Leviathan, a very rare book by Thomas Hobbes published in 1651.Portage is in the collections of three major New York Museums: the New York Public Library, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, as well as many other collections (see notes on provenance). It is a rare and highly desirable work for major art collections. It was recently the main feature of the Hayward Gallery’s travelling exhibition in the UK, presented in a perspex box more than four metres long to allow for the viewing of all the figures in procession.
David Krut
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