In Search of Lost Time – By Alex Sudheim

Mail and Guardian

Sept 13 – 19 2002

For “In Search of Lost Time” 2002

In the Mezzanine and Park Galleries is In Search of Lost Time, a body of work developed over 5 years Durban-based artist Janet Solomon. Predominantly large-scale oil paintings the works are striking portraits and comments. Solomon borrows freely from art history and ‘masterpieces’ and their need for technical perfection to comment on contemporary existential questions and interpretations of beauty.

Positing the work in opposition to more ‘contemporary’ and technology driven art, Solomon is interested in the human struggle through two-dimensional presentation. Interrogating art history and its images, Solomon re-ascribe some works in a new context, and people these with individuals that she knows. Engaging highly charged symbolic imagery, these paintings could also be seen as evoking and unlocking the universal by placing a microscope on the known, mundane day to day peopled world of the artist.