Sanell Aggenbach - WARREN EDITIONS

https://www.instagram.com/sanellaggenbach/

Sanell Aggenbach‘s work is as illusive and ethereal as her subjects. Whether she is delving into satirical cultural exorcisms (Graceland, 2009) or exploring intimate portraiture of archived negatives (Sub Rosa, 2008), Aggenbach’s work retains a strange intimacy despite the anonymity of her subjects. The emphasis of her work relates to visual trickery and plays on subterranean elements. Her most recent paintings offer an ambiguous open-endedness, employing a restrained palette of corroded process colours.

Aggenbach’s work deals primarily with the intersection of history and private narratives, considering the process of recall and interpretation. Her work presents a haunting ambiguity characterised by her materially multifarious nature as she moves comfortably between the various disciplines of painting, printmaking, and sculpture. She has proved to be a critical voice in contemporary South African art.

Text by James Macdonald

The work Sanell Aggenbach has made at Warren Editions in the monotype technique not only shows her skill as a painter but, indicates the adeptness she possesses in turning a painting mentality into a printing mentality; her oils thinly applied with an exactitude and confidence, a quickness necessary to the technique and from a palette predetermined and well thought-out. Sanell’s methodology is very planned and, reliant on the source material – she arrives ready and produces a work at a time as is determined by oil monotypes. In this oil-based approach – the paper has been prepared in such a way that it is damp enough to absorb and accept the image printed from the wet oils. ‘Not yet dried’ is the way it is done. If the oil paint dries the image is sabotaged because the paint oxidizes i.e. oxygen reacts with the wet paint allowing it to change and become hard and it will not print to its greatest ability so to speak. So one has to print there and then, in the same day and this of course has granted certain affectations to the methodology perhaps also to the content that the artists bring when working in oil monotypes.

Text by Sara-Aimee Verity

Born in Cape Town in 1975, Aggenbach currently lives and works in Woodstock, Cape Town. Her explorative work has secured her many achievements including winning the 2003 Absa L’Atelier award. Her work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including Sasol, Absa, Spier, SABC, Red Bull (Austria) and Anglo Gold.

Aggenbach has collaborated on numerous occasions with Cape Town-based printmaking studio Warren Editions, and has over the years developed an impressive body of works in print.