The Living Artists Emporium

Bringing street and graffiti art into the gallery space – this is an artist to watch.

Dbongz Mahlathi 

Artistic statement:

Dbongz Mahlathi is a street artist from the West of Johannesburg. He started participating in street art in 2008 when he first came to the city to pursue his tertiary education. He fell in love with the freedom it afforded him, the colours, the huge canvases in a form of walls, the confidence it instilled in him and the ability to spread conceptual messages to the masses.

Growing up he’d always been attracted to the naturally colourful and vibrant features of the world, but having come up in a township, all one is surrounded by is a setting of mundane landscapes and uninformed opinions, which is really uninspiring to say the least.

It’s a fact that kids who grow up in colourful, lively spaces tend to be more jubilant and enthusiastic as opposed to kids who don’t. It’s for this purpose that he’s always wanted to add colour to dull, boring spaces, as he knows that it’d change someone’s mood on a daily basis and through the messages that are behind the artworks, the aim to elevate human intellect will be achieved as well.

His introduction to manifesto driven art in the form of the Superstroke art movement and the fusion of it with street art, allowed his goal of colour and texture to be realised as it added more to the impressiveness, dimension and artistry of the style that he’s perpetually pursuing through mixed media collage as well as other alternative methods and techniques that he discovers as he goes.

He continues to say, “It’d be great to be able to communicate through art what language can’t, to have the ability to interpret the years of pursuit into positively influential artworks that resonate with everyday lives, and to forever vibrate mundane spaces, to encourage ongoing optimism in young minds, to boost confidence and eradicate doubt and fear in human brains and inspire patience and persistence, and it is happening, one artwork at a time.”

On exhibition at the LAE Gallery – 1 Fox Street, Johannesburg

Tel:  +27 82 5733 488

Email: info@laejhb.co.za