The Five Themes
Thick Time: Soho and Felix

The first section of the exhibition features a recurring fictional character in Kentridge's work, Soho Eckstein, an overbearing businessman with an uneasy conscience and his delicate alter-ego, Felix Teitlebaum. An ongoing work of nine animated shorts, 9 Drawings for Projection traces the lives of these characters during the last decade of apartheid in Johannesburg.

Occasional and Residual Hope: Ubu and the Procession

Inspired by the Alfred Jarry play, Ubu Roi, with its strong themes of corruption and cowardice, Kentridge developed a series of etchings in 1996 called Ubu Tells the Truth. The following year he completed an animated film of the same name along with some drawings. Exploring themes of truth and reconciliation, these works are also a commentary on the human rights abuses that took place during the time of apartheid.

Parcours d'Atelier: Artist in the Studio

The third section of the exhibition explores Kentridge at a crossroads in his career, putting the spotlight on his own art practice to expose the work that takes place prior to a film, drawing or sculptural work being created. A tribute to French film director Georges Melies, Kentridge's large-scale multi-screen projection 7 Fragments for Georges Melies (2003) consists of seven films revealing Kentridge's own creative process.

Sarastro and the Master's Voice: The Magic Flute

In 2005, Kentridge directed a production of Mozart's The Magic Flute for Belgium's renowned opera house, La Monnaie. Inspiring him to create several films, drawings and theatre models, and a video projection called Learning the Flute (2003), this body of work sees Kentridge explore the contrasting states of darkness and light.

Learning from the Absurd: The Nose

The final section of the exhibition consists of a multichannel projection made in the lead up to Kentridge's 2010 production of The Nose, for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The companion piece, I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), is a room-size installation of projected films that examine Russian modernism and the repression experienced by the Russian avant-garde during the 1920s and 1930s.