Lyndi Sales: in transit
Toomey Tourell Fine Art is pleased to announce a solo exhibition with South African artist Lyndi Sales who will be presenting her newest body of work, entitled in transit.
Dates of Exhibition: Wednesday, April 1st through Thursday, April 30th, 2009.
Reception with the artist: Thursday, April 2nd from 5:30-7:30 PM.
On November 28, 1987, the SAA Helderberg crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing all 159 people aboard. One of the passengers was Lyndi Sales father — an event that occurred when she was just fourteen years old. Much of the artwork created by Sales as an adult artist has centered around the process of coming to terms with her father’s death and investigating the fragility of life and the transience of human existence. Her choice of material and process (work constructed largely from boarding passes, airline safety cards, airline tickets, life rafts and lottery tickets to name a few) provide finished works that are at times whimsical, perverse, tragic and cathartic.
In the essay by the art historian Michael Smith, he states:
“In this work, the notion of interplay extends beyond the physical of the negative and positive shapes, even beyond the existential concepts of life and death, onto a strata that begins to interrogate the artistic process. For Sales, artmaking is quite literally a superfine balance between creation and destruction. The works she makes straddle a divide between permanence and ephemerally, and seem to have a strangely powerful vulnerability that is compelling.
Yet one has to believe that this work, and in fact all of Sales’ work, contains the means to a meaningful, useful conception of trauma and healing. Like decal sheets from which all of the images have been removed, her works are confounding, necessarily frustrating, yet also endlessly evocative in the sense that what remains behind poetically registers that which has been removed.”
— Michael Smith
Please join the gallery in welcoming Lyndi Sales in her inaugural US exhibition. Born in Johannesburg in 1973, Sales currently lives and works in Cape Town. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a merit at the 2007 ABSA L’Atelier and has been included in many international exhibitions, most recently the 2008 Holland Paper Biennale at Museum Rijswijk, Holland and this year a solo show in Paris, France at Galerie Maria Lund.
Lyndi Sales - Vortex 2, 2008, paper and watercolor, 12.5 x 1.5 x 12.5 inches
Lyndi Sales - Old R2 Note, 2008, money note, 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 1 inches
Lyndi Sales - Ocean Floor II, 2009, Fabriano paper, watercolor and pins, 33 x 2.5 x 45.4 inches
Lyndi Sales - How Long Can You Hold Your Breath, 2008, life vest, 31 x 2.3 x 26 inches
Lyndi Sales - Flight Path 4, 2009, safety cards, 40 1/2 x 61 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches
Lyndi Sales - Breath, 2009, Fabriano paper, watercolor and pins, 33 x 2 1/2 x 45 1/4 inches
Lyndi Sales - Brace Spiral, 2008, paper and watercolor, 12.5 x 1.5 x 12.5 inches
Lyndi Sales - Shatter, 2007, 159 SAA boarding passes and pins, 80 x 80 x 3 inches, edition of 3
