Strauss & co - Wits Art Museum

28 WITS ARTS MUSEUM ENDOWMENT AUCTION 18 Serge Nitegeka (b.1983) Structural – response I: Studio study VI Paint on wood Diptych. Each panel 132 x 69 cm 2013 Donated by the artist R34 000 – 45 000 Nitegeka was born in Burundi but now lives in Johannesburg. He completed his undergraduate Fine Arts degree at Wits where he is currently engaged in post- graduate studies. This acrylic paint on wood panel diptych is an emblematic work. Featuring hard-edged, bold line-work and a high-contrast palette of black, white and red, the diptych reflects the common themes in Nitegeka’s work: migration, shipment and symbolic abstraction. Contemporary curator Rita Kersting has written about the use of strong black painted lines in Nitegeka’s work and likens it to the ‘signs of destruction’that disrupt the soft areas of colour in Kandinksy’s early works, and the straight, stable compositional lines in Piet Mondrian’s paintings. In Nitegeka’s work, the black lines evoke an elusive visual shifting between references to architectural beams, de-constructed shipping crates, or perhaps even abstractions of migratory routes. In this shifting, Structural imparts a subtly political edge to what might otherwise be read as a minimalist or neo-modernist painting aesthetic.  PPS