The Physics of A PORTRAIT
Swaziland born artist Mbongeni Fakudze, an exceptionally talented portrait painter with the inquisitive eye of a scientist, is one of only three featured artists at the acclaimed ODA Gallery of Fine Art in Franschhoek.
His portraits – commanding and charged with energy – invite viewers to consider the poles of male and female thinking, while retaining a sense of androgyny in order to convey a full range of emotions that are not dictated by gender stereotypes. Created through a similar process to that of a physicist pulling apart observable aspects of reality to reveal elements concealed from everyday perception, Fakudze’s portrayals are spontaneous and expressive, and his colour application is vivid.
“I have always seen the world through the microscopic eye of an atomic physicist and simultaneously the cosmic eye of an astrophysicist. I am fascinated by the nature of the physical world in which we live,” he says. “Finding that it may look solid from a distance but dissolve or disintegrate into particles as you get closer and closer . . . Then the question becomes: ‘What exactly is reality?’”