Marcel Herholdt lives and works in Greyton, a small village in the Overberg region near Cape Town. Self-taught, he has spent much of his adult life working in the art departments of film and television productions, a background that has sharpened his eye for visual storytelling, composition, and the power of iconography. His paintings bring that cinematic sensibility into the gallery, translated into an Afro-pop protest aesthetic that is bold, colourful, and uncompromising.

At the heart of Herholdt’s practice is a deep unease with the quiet erosion of personal freedom. His paintings take aim at the mechanisms of surveillance and control, CCTV cameras, algorithmic tracking, the steady cashless drift of modern commerce, and the soft coercions of government and corporate convenience, and ask, with genuine urgency: can any of it be trusted? His work resists the comfortable lie that safety and convenience are neutral gifts. The message, as he puts it, is simple: revolt, rebel, rethink.

This Is Not a Krokodokulus is Marcel Herholdt’s second solo exhibition with WORLDART, following his debut show Welcome to Club Cocomo in August 2022. Presented downstairs at WORLDART, the exhibition introduces new work that continues his exploration of resistance, freedom, and the mythology of Club Cocomo.