Biography
In his drawings and prints Mashaba investigates the notion of thought as a base of origins of life, he incorporates inconceivable texts form and lines in his work to construct figures, his work attempts to establish a dialogue between mind, body and spirit and technology.
Lehlogonolo Mashaba was born in Kwa-Thema in 1983. He began his art education at the Funda Center 2003. He later studied design and printmaking in 2004 at the Artist Proof Studios. He established himself as a professional printmaker at Artist Proof Studio where he collaborated with many local and international artists on a vast variety or printmaking processes specialised in intaglio, relief and monotype. He has been practising as an artist for eight years and a few solo exhibition under his belt. A noted public artwork is a large six-floor balcony drawing installation at the ABSA offices.
ARTIST STATEMENT
His work is an examination of mysteries of order and complexities of the essence of life form .it also involves giving homage to information and how it can be distorted over a period of time to take shape of human form in a combination of graffiti-like patterns and in-comprehensive text. The mark-making the human form is depicted in a state of integration or disintegration of energies and particles in a non-objective form.
Thoughts \Words hold power. The more you know about something, the more it has the ability to change you. I assimilate the ambiguous presence of found texts through successive processes of re-interpretation, reading, writing, printing, incision and layering. I draw attention to the laboursome process of cutting relief prints, hand-cut paper and re-assembled. Reconstructing the human figures highlight the strength and frailty of paper to embody the notions human . I convey a human body in a convergence of lines and text by repetitive text and paper mechanics.
He is fascinated by the human form in its most intangible form. This is depicted by drawing human traces without showing the complete physical structure. The intention are to depict complexity of human form by making drawing marks that represent energies. These fragments can be looked as moments of formations captured in time The integration or disintegration of matter in action, the beginning or the end of natural life that takes new form.
