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ZOLILE PETSHANE

ZOLILE PETSHANE (b. 1973) is an abstract artist who lives and works in Kathlehong, near Johannesburg. After studying print making at the renowned Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg, he obtained an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts at the University of Witwatersrand in 2007 under the supervision of Prof. Karel Nel.

He is known for building richly layered surfaces on canvas where colour operates like a language. Working across media such as pastel, acrylic and mixed media, he stacks fields of colour into energetic, sometimes landscape-like compositions, then disrupts them with scratched textures, marks, fragments of text, numbers and symbols. These additions act as visual “notes” that hint at lived experience—belief systems, consumer culture, politics, memory—without becoming literal illustration. The work rewards close looking: beneath the punch of colour is a dense, deliberate structure and a restless, investigative intelligence.

Petshane has exhibited extensively locally and internationally and his work can be found in several corporate collections as well as in the JAG (Johannesburg Art Gallery) permanent collection.