The Drain of Progress, 2007

Zander Blom grew up in Pretoria, South Africa, and today lives in the part of Johannesburg called Brixton, where his processual, experimental interventions are created. His workshop and domicile is both pivot and fulcrum of temporary installations, which Blom assembles, for example, for the photo series The Drain of Progress, from various materials including wood, cardboard, paper, paint, tape, and everyday utility objects. However, before he changes or deconstructs them again though in order to rearrange them, he creates a photographic documentation of the works, which – after adding a diary-like note about place and time of creation – is what remains for exhibition.

Zander Blom’s artistic practice is closely connected with his approach to Western (history of) art, which is through art historical publications and their reproductions of works of the classic modern period. The photographic depictions of works by Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Kurt Schwitters, or Vladimir Tatlin, with their specific mise-en-scène of light, color scheme, detail, or choice of paper interest him as much as the original. With his playful and ironic re-creations of modern Western classics Blom puts their utopian formal and contextual concerns center stage, and at the same time he uses them for a very serious and personal analysis and determination of his own position in relation to art history. (AM)