SHADOWS by Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys

2 August 2018 - 5 September 2018

ARTISTS STATEMENT:

The human form is familiar territory and yet, each is unique, not quite like another. This ‘body’ of work explores and celebrates the human form and visage through portraiture and the nude as a site of intimacy and vulnerability, beautiful and imperfect. Working mainly in monotone – volume and weight of form is revealed through the interplay of light and dark. Figures and faces emerge from the shadows in an accumulation of passing moments.

ARTIST BIO:

Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys was born in 1976 Durban, South Africa. He obtained a Bachelors Degree in Art at the University of Technology in 1999 majoring in painting and photography. After studying Michael spent three years in Mozambique, focusing on photography while working various jobs, this culminated in a photographic exhibition on return to Durban at DIT Art Gallery in 2003. While traveling through Italy in 2002 discovered Florence Academy of Art returning the following year to attend a drawing course, and a painting course more recently in 2014 focusing on classical realism and sight-size method of painting. Michael has taken part in various group shows and was selected as one of top 100 in the Sanlam Portrait Award 2015 and 2017. He has also exhibited at Stellenbosch Woordfees in 2016 and 2017, as well as producing work for the ongoing Creative Block Project. His recent work focuses on painting and drawing with an emphasis on portraiture figurative and still life subjects. Michael currently lives and works in Cape Town.