SubText | Chris Valentine

99 Loop is delighted to be exhibiting Johannesburg artist Chris Valentine's second solo exhibition, from the end of January 2018.

In this latest body of work, Valentine continues his exploration of identity formation within a contemporary urban context. He focuses more closely, though, on the layered composition and intangibility of subjects as individuals, with indefinable personalities and histories.

The figures in 'SubText' are never quite making eye contact with the viewer, suggesting the unknowability of another person. The abstracted backgrounds and pixelated glitching of both the paintings' surface and sitters' faces add to the unsettling nature of the portraits.