Lot 133: PAUL STOPFORTH

SOUTH AFRICA/UNITED STATES
'The Island' #7 (Cabinets) Nelson Mandela's Prison Cell - Robben Island
Signed and dated "Paul Stopforth 04" lower right; also signed twice, titled and dated "Paul Stopforth 'The Island' #7 (Cabinets) Nelson Mandela's Prison Cell - Robben Island 2004" on the reverse.

24 x 80 in. (61 x 203.2 cm).

Milk paint, charcoal and gouache on wood panel.

2004

David Krut Projects, New York

This is one of a series of works done after Stopforth spent a two-week period as the Artist In Residence on Robben Island in 2004. The image references the steel cabinets in the cell occupied by Nelson Mandela for 17 years, and as a result of their close proximity to him this mundane object becomes a metaphorical container of memory and time. For Stopforth “the cabinets half open, half closed doors call simultaneously to a past and a future, as if caught in the cross winds of history.” (Leora Maltz from the forthcoming Taxi Art Books Publication: Paul Stopforth)