LONDON.- Jack Bell Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Stefan Krynauw.

Born in the year of the fall of Apartheid, Krynauw's work operates in an abstract space, devoid of the explicit racial or identity politics so prevalent in contemporary South African art. His paintings are both Baroque and expressionist. Glimpses of natural and architectural forms come in and of perspective as they float, twist, spin and blur. The artist builds up each painting over time; layering, washing, drawing, writing and then destroying the surface by scraping only to resurrect it later.

The work originates from a kind of archival memory, a history re-lived by the artist through the consumption of images. Drawn from textbooks, magazines, own photographs and the internet - photo copied, printed, torn out, cut up, splayed, sprayed and trampled on - Krynauw's selected media populate his studio like debris after a whirlwind. The source material is then dislocated from its physical origin to feed the young painter's search for meaning and his voice.

While Krynauw is a self-taught painter, he holds a degree in Drama from the University of Stellenbosch which informs a bodily and performative description of the work. The reference imaging is like a script that is re-enacted on canvas. His work becomes a procession of performing the painting action itself and its repeated performance over time and across canvas.

Krynauw was born 1989, Somerset East, South Africa. He now lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. This will be his first exhibition in the UK.