Evan Oberholster - Collaborating Artist
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| James reading Franny & Zooey |
At the centre of The Finkelsteins Are Coming to Dinner is an artist at work.
Throughout the play, Nate paints James – his model, his lover and, increasingly, the focus of his emotional world. The studio becomes a space in which both the paintings and the relationship between Nate and James take shape.
Created by South African artist Evan Oberholster, the paintings seen in the production occupy a unique space between theatre and visual art. Within the world of the play they are Nate's paintings. Outside the play they exist as independent works by Oberholster.
This relationship between fiction and reality continues beyond the stage in Opening Night, an accompanying exhibition that allows audiences to step into the artistic world of the play. The exhibition extends the experience of The Finkelsteins into the theatre foyer, where the paintings are encountered as artworks in their own right.
About Evan Oberholster
Evan Oberholster is a figurative artist whose work has focused extensively on the human figure, particularly the male nude. His paintings place their subjects within recognisable and often intimate everyday settings, exploring identity, vulnerability and intimacy through quiet observation.
As he explains:
"People have notions of selves which they show in the way they dress. The undressing is a levelling - it emphasises the equality of being human. There is also a timelessness about it – while fashion and clothes have changed we have always looked more or less the same when naked."
In an interview with theatre critic Robyn Cohen for the Weekend Argus during the original Cape Town production of The Finkelsteins, Oberholster reflected on the relationship between the paintings and the play, and on the audience's encounter with the male nude:
"The wonderful thing about literature and art is that the intention of the artist is just the beginning of a complex process of audience response. Both the play and my paintings challenge a stilted convention that makes sexuality and nudity taboo."
