Subtle humor from Britain and South Africa in Colombia

Internationally renowned contemporary artists John Wood and Paul Harrison have brought a subtle British humor to the Colombian city of Medellin with a major exhibition at the Antioquia Museum, an anthology of drawings and videos they have made for the past 20 years.

According to the curator Nydia Gomez, humor is the main resource of the two artists. Calling this extensive body of work “acute with a tone of lightness”, Gomez points out the artists’ poetic creative strategy that addresses to issues of theoretic reflections on art and even existentialism.

John Wood & Paul Harrison Twenty Six (Drawing and falling things) 2001.

John Wood & Paul Harrison Board 1993.

The videos are made in minimal, clean spaces, with almost no colors, using an austere approach , making a parody of the white cube of the exhibition room, where the protagonists are the artists’ own bodies making minimum gestures, and in some occasions, insignificant daily objects would become alive with small movements indicating the human presence.

Wood and Harrison Twenty Six (Drawing and Falling Things)

Another important exhibition by the renowned South African artist William Kentridge also opened in Medellin, which recently earned the reputation as the world’s most innovative city. Under the title of “Fortune”, the exhibition presents a rich body of work by Kentridge since the 80s to the present at the Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition includes animated films based on charcoal drawings, etchings, books, collages, sculptures and scenic art presentations. His entire body of work, either addressing political or poetic issues, is magnificently entwined with the landscape and the social history of his birth place, emotionally responding to difficult issues such as the legacy of the apartheid and colonialism, with a backdrop packed with humor and fantasy.