AN EXHIBITION OF MALE NUDES by Evan Oberholster on View at Alexander Upstairs

AN EXHIBITION OF MALE NUDES by artist Evan Oberholster is currently running in the parlour room at Alexander Bar, in tandem performances of Richard Kaplan's delightful new play, THE FINKELSTEINS ARE COMING TO DINNER. The play is currently in its premiere run at the Cape Town Fringe, after which it will transfer to the Alexander Upstairs.

In his art, Oberholster aims to reposition the nude within contemporary culture. The idea that clothes make the man has been around since the beginning of time, although it was Mark Twain who first made it a pithy saying, adding that 'naked people have little or no effect on society'. This is a concept that Oberholster hopes to turn upside down by showing how society and nudity are inextricably intertwined. What Oberholster does through his nude paintings of everyday people, is to deconstruct the camouflage that clothing provides and show how culture is not only a construct of clothing, language, belief and behaviour. Culture also exists in nudity.

The artworks are on sale through Alexander Bar and can be viewed freely during the regular opening hours of the bar. Reproductions of some of the portraits in N EXHIBITION OF MALE NUDES are used as props in THE FINKELSTEINS ARE COMING TO DINNER, which tells the story of an artist, Nate (played by Andrew Laubscher) who is haunted by his dead Jewish mother (played by Megan Furniss). The play has been nominated for a Fringe Fresh award for David Viviers's performance as James, Nate's model. The play is directed by Adrian Collins, with lighting design by Guy de Lancey.

Oberholster was born in 1956 in South Africa. After completing a degree in Fine Art at the University of Pretoria, he moved to Amsterdam, where he worked as an artist and illustrator. In 1999, he returned to South Africa and held his first large solo exhibition of male nudes. He has subsequently held two solo exhibitions in Cape Town and has participated in a number of group exhibitions, and his work is held in private collections in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States of America.

Oberholster has long explored the relationship between nudity and being. This exhibition continues his work showing ordinary people in ordinary settings, all nude. What he does is quite different from the trends that at present make up nude painting. His art does not conform to the grotesque distortions of the human anatomy and the idea of the human as animal that has become prevalent in contemporary art. He has no room in his work for lyrical romanticisations of the human form or what he calls 'the prevalence of the moody, sensual nude with blurry genitals. He embraces neither the erotic tradition that focuses on bodily perfection or the idealisation of the human form nor the pornographic realism of some modern work. Nonetheless, there is certainly an underlying eroticism to the work which contradicts the deliberate mundaneness of the settings, such as working on the computer, having a smoke break or playing cards. He observes wryly:

I have observed that the distinction between sexuality, sensuality and eroticism generally says more about viewer than the subject matter. Work that I have considered to be completely divested of sexuality has been viewed by others as erotic. How we see nudes reflects on our own prejudices about the naked human body.

The European influence - in terms of cultural and societal paradigms - has changed in Oberholster's work. His work in these paintings is South African in a way that the unclothed figure has never before been: uniquely and unmistakably a South African experience. The vibrancy and contradictions of the whole of South African society exist on these canvases in microcosm: tensions between heterosexuality and gay lifestyles, between black and white, between the roles of men and women. Oberholster comments:

Particularly within the South African context, on a personal level, this century is characterised by a re-definition of relationships across lines of race, gender and sexuality. Although this has been an ongoing process over the last decade, I am attempting a contemporary visual representation of these changes. The challenge is to see the nude as a representation of contemporary culture. To articulate this visually, I have looked both at the superficial i.e. body ornamentation as in tattoos, piercings and the accoutrements of style, as well as the more substantial portrayal in the form of relationships of gender and sexuality.

The exhibition can be viewed in the parlour room at Alexander Bar anytime during the bar's regular opening hours. The remaining performances of THE FINKELSTEINS ARE COMING TO DINNER at the Cape Town Fringe are on 27 September at 16:00, 28 September at 22:00, 1 October at 20:00, 2, 6 and 7 October at 16:00 and 8 October at 18:00. Bookings for these performances are through the Cape Town Fringe website.

The run at the Alexander Upstairs takes place from 10 - 29 October, with shows taking place at 19:00 nightly excepting 18, 19 and 21 October. Tickets cost R140-R150 and can be booked online or at the bar, anytime during its regular opening hours. Telephone bookings can be made on 021 300 1652. Alexander Bar & Café is situated on 76 Strand Street in Cape Town's CBD. Find out more about the venue on Facebook or Twitter.