Lehlohonolo Mashaba
Biography
In his drawings and prints Mashaba investigates the notion of thought as a basis of the origins of life, he incorporates inconceivable text forms and lines in his work to construct figures, and his work attempts to establish a dialogue between mind, body spirit and technology. Lehlogonolo Mashaba was born in Kwa-Thema in 1983. He began his art education at the Funda Center in 2003. He later studied design and printmaking in 2004 at the Artist Proof Studios. He established himself as a professional printmaker at Artist Proof Studio where he collaborated with many local and international artists on a vast variety of printmaking processes specialised in intaglio, relief and monotype. He has been practising as an artist for eight years and has a few solo exhibitions under his belt. A noted public artwork is a large six-floor balcony drawing installation at the ABSA offices.
Artist Statement
His work is an examination of mysteries of order and complexities of the essence of life form .it also involves giving homage to information and how it can be distorted over some time to take the shape of the human form in a combination of graffiti-like patterns and in-comprehensive text. The markmaking of the human form is depicted in a state of integration or disintegration of energies and particles in a non-objective form. Thoughts \Words hold power. The more you know about something, the more it can change you. I assimilate the ambiguous presence of found texts through successive processes of re-interpretation, reading, writing, printing, incision and layering. I draw attention to the labour-some process of cutting relief prints, hand-cut paper and re-assembled. Reconstructing the human figures highlights the paper's strength and frailty to embody the notions of the human. I convey a human body in a convergence of lines and text by repetitive text and paper mechanics. He is fascinated by the human form in its most intangible form. This is depicted by drawing human traces without showing the complete physical structure. The intention is to depict the complexity of the human form by making drawing marks that represent energies. These fragments can be looked at as moments of formations captured in time The integration or disintegration of matter in action, or the beginning or the end of natural life that takes a new form.