Seriously, who is Fringe?
FEATURED ON JEWISH REPORT
South Africa’s undisputed king of pop is known to all as Fringe, but nobody actually knows who he is. The SA Jewish Report sent this Jewish enigma questions to find out a little more about him and his art.
OWN CORRESPONDENT
What can you tell us about yourself?
I’m an artist, I’m a businessman, and a family man, I’m a Jew, and I’m my own best-kept secret. Okay, maybe not in that order, but something like that. I have always drawn in notepads – doodled actually – which makes me painful to be with. At some stage, I began to take my sketches, which are quite good if I may say so myself, and imagine them in a bigger format against pop backgrounds. That got me on a trajectory where I started to look at what classic pop art had given to the art world. It’s fun art that plays with well-known brands and famous people. Then I looked at how so many contemporary artists were incorporating old paper, like newspaper magazines and old books, into their artworks and bingo, I found a style. It’s pretty random, but then, so is life.
Pop Goes The Family Man
FEATURED ON ART TIMES
By Matthew Krouse
The artist known simply as FRINGE completed a year-long rollout of prints in May. He released a print a month – twelve in total – in his conceptual Facsimile series that reflected with pop iconography on family values, isolation and art practice in the time of the Covid pandemic.
The irony of using the age-old fax as a springboard for making messages to humanity opened a universe of possibility. What does an anonymous, cult figure like FRINGE have to say, in a time of lockdown, about a life-experienced in confinement? Perhaps, through his eyes we can learn something, given that he spends all of his time creating in total isolation anyway.
The fried eggs, Warholesque bananas and sprayed hearts, that adorn the Facsimile series, illustrate the texts’ overriding conclusion that family values, artistic pursuits and individualistic loves are the keys to a happy marriage – with oneself.