THE WHOLE OF THE MOON

Solo exhibition for Thembinkosi Kohli

The whole of the moon is a phrase made famous by The Waterboys in a song with the same title that was a minor hit in the mid-eighties. The general interpretation is that when two people look at the same thing, they don’t necessarily see the same thing.

Thembinkosi Kohli is a Cape Town based artist. In 2003, with the help of The Royal Netherlands Embassy, he published a comic book titled “The Shadow”. The main character is a boy called Q-phy, through whose eyes we were allowed to look at the world with the same sense of wonderment and surprise that the young boy does.

Initially Q-phy was always accompanied by his shadow, sometimes in conversation with it. The message seemed to be that one’s sub-conscious is like one’s shadow, always present, and that it is therefore important to address issues because like your shadow, it won’t go away.

Q-phy has since featured in many paintings in which he slowly started looking at the world differently, shifting his focus from a more introverted view to one that appreciates a bigger picture.

We now see references to a world where water, trees and his place in nature are as important in understanding himself as his shadow was ten years ago, suggesting that not only is there more than one way to look at things, but also that we can have different perspectives of the same thing.

The whole of the moon will open at The Black Box gallery from Monday 2 December and concludes on Saturday 28 December.