Strauss & co - 16 February 2019, Cape Town

26 12 Banele Khoza SWAZI/SOUTH AFRICAN 1994– Esselen Street signed and dated 2016 acrylic on canvas 61 by 91,5 cm R15 000 – 20 000 ITEM NOTES Swaziland-born Banele Khoza studied fine art at the Tshwane University of Technology. His debut solo exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum, Temporary Feelings , was an emotion-laden showcase of fourteen paintings and works on paper. His liquid portraits evoked the abstracted figuration of Robert Hodgins, although Khoza credited Marlene Dumas’s 2006 expressionist portrait of Moshekwa Langa with inspiring him to be a painter. This lot forms part of a loose series of works depicting crowded human landscapes. They include La Cantina (2016), featured on his debut solo exhibition and referencing a pop- ular gay nightspot in Pretoria, and Sunnyside (2016), which appeared on the group show Arcadia at Smith Studio, Cape Town, in 2016 and invoked a bohemian neigh- bourhood in Pretoria. Striking throughout these works is Khoza’s watercolour-like handling of acrylic. Khoza’s gay identity is central to his practice. He frankly titled his 2017 solo exhibition at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa LGBTQI+ Banele Khoza . Sean O’Toole