Strauss & co - 4 June 2018, Johannesburg

15 crisis in Europe. They do not shy away from stretching the body as artistic medium. Time and history are put in new rela- tions to each other. Science impacts on art, resulting in a new abstraction, a style sometimes resembling graphic models of DNA structures. Combining word and image, text and art, has become common practice for contemporary artists. The Op Art and Kinetic Art of the late-1960s have made way in contempo- rary art for the moving digital image. Documentary evidence and politics, mainstays of such movements as Feminist Art, give way to a group of counter-globalisation artists working with digital social platforms in their continued protest against neoliberalism and capitalism. Says Hito Steyerl, a contemporary German artist, listed as the top person in the art world in the Power100 issue of the influential British magazine, ArtReview ; ‘Contemporary art is made possible by neoliberal capital, plus the internet, biennales, art fairs, parallel pop-up histories and growing income inequalities. Let’s add asymmetrical warfare, real-estate speculation, tax evasion, money laundering and deregulated money market.’ 3 It appears as though much of the driving force of the subject matter used by Contemporary art- ists can be ascribed to the global political economy. The contemporary offerings in the Strauss & Co winter sale in Johannesburg, provides the ideal opportunity for collectors to reflect on the contemporaneity of South African art. This is very evident in a work by Dan Halter, for example. Halter uses cut-up strips of plastic carrier bags from his native Zimbabwe to weave together again, only to reveal some Chinese script in the new picture plane he has created, signifying the Asian colonization of Africa. Esther Mahlangu’s Ndebele Patterns could be seen as the very first contemporary South African art, as she was included the Magicians exhibition mentioned above. Grappling with civil strife and restitution in a previous political dispensa- tion and the effects it has on identity, is clearly illustrated in such works as Willem Boshoff’s Land Grab , Anton Karstell’s Voortrekker Monument , Brett Murray’s Policeman , Penny Siopis’s Shame series of etching, and Hentie van der Merwe’s blurred photograph of a military dress uniform. Some contemporary South African artists address the issue of global terrorism, such as in the work of Hannatjie van der Wat, titled Sept 9, 2011, New York , and Peter Hugo’s photograph dealing with religious and political strife in Nigeria. 1 Alexander Alberro (2009). ‘Periodising Contemporary Art’. In: Zoya Kocur & Simon Leung (eds) (2012). Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985 . Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Kelly Grovier (2015) Art Since 1989 . London: Thames & Hudson. Maria Hlavajova & Simon Sheikh (2016) Former West: Art and the Contemporary since 1989 , Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Terry Smith (2009) What is Contemporary Art? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2 Grovier, page 15 3 Hito Steyerl (2017). Contemporary Art , Art Review, November 2017, page 102. Lots 170–248