On viewFree
Roger BallenMuseum Hanmi Samcheong
Roger Ballen. The Works: Drawing meets Photography
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About the exhibition
About 130 photographs, drawings and etchings cover some 60 years of Roger Ballen's work. Seven parts follow how drawing and photography fed each other.
The route opens with city pictures from the late 1960s and 1970s. Dorps and Platteland, from the 1980s and 1990s, turn to South African villages and the people in them. In Outland, the artist starts placing people, things and drawn marks inside the frame. Shadow Chamber and Boarding House, made after 2000, rely even more on staged scenes.
On basement level 1, Theatre of Apparitions shows photographs of lines scratched or wiped into darkened glass, some as lightbox panels. Birds and rats appear as human companions in Asylum of the Birds and Roger's Rats. Spirits and Spaces brings in color work from after 2020. A separate part in the museum's storage gallery has painted Polaroids and etchings.
The artist recorded the English audio guide.
About the artist
Roger Ballen (b. 1950, New York) is based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Museum Hanmi says Ballen majored in psychology and geology, and that Ballen's mother, who worked at the New York office of Magnum Photos, brought early contact with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Strand. The artist's official site says work as a geologist led to the countryside and to small South African towns. Starting from documentary photography, the practice widened into drawing, installation and film. Museum Hanmi says this aesthetic is called "Ballenesque".
Sources: Roger Ballen: official site · Museum Hanmi: exhibition page
