CARNIVAL OF MEMORIES

Artist Dion Cupido’s fascination with memory, in particular its retrieval and the question of its accuracy, has always been an important subject in his paintings. With his latest solo exhibition titled Carnival of memories, he continues to explore this concept. The exhibition opens Thursday 5 February at the Worldart gallery in Cape Town.

“Our biased memories do more than simply present us with images of our personal history. It also shapes our sense of who and what we are. In doing so, it guides us to forming an opinion about ourselves that may not be very accurate. As a result it does little more than helping us experience life only as we THINK we know it,” says Cupido.

As a teenager, Dion Cupido tagged walls in Mitchells Plain. More than twenty years later, it is clear that his studio-produced paintings still are deeply influenced by street art – so much so that it can be seen as another form of tagging.

Writer and art historian Ashraf Jamal recently observed that Cupido “represents the very newly minted post-transitional moment in SA art; a moment in which our dark history and its democratic afterglow are both beside the point.”

Cupido’s is an important voice in the contemporary art scene, mostly because few manage to combine both the retinal and cerebral qualities a painting potentially has to offer as delicately as he does, but also because he uses a visual language that fearlessly explores techniques not traditionally associated with fine art.

Carnival of memories opens on February month’s First Thursday gallery night and concludes on 26 February 2015.