Among Africa’s preeminent stone sculptors, Joseph Muzondo brings us this captivating series of linocuts on handmade paper. Fusing his sculptural hand with color on pliable fiber, he gives intriguing depth to a very familiar subject, the thumbprint. The Zimbabwe-born artist renders these modernist expressionist portraits reminiscent of African masks. Consider them a disguise and a likeness, he says. “Wherever I am, I study human beings, then transform them into masks.” As a young boy, Muzondo apprenticed with his uncle in their hometown of Masvingo, Zimbabwe. He quickly rose to prominence as a leading stone carver. Today the South African-based artist creates abstract portraits with both ancestral and modernist influences, and he fashions pieces deploying three additional talents: print making, painting, and texture design. With these thumbprints, Muzondo seeks to engage every viewer, despite the world’s divisiveness. The style, the artist insists, is neither tribal nor European, but a fusion he has claimed as his signature. We now have a virtual color wheel of Muzondo’s striking thumbprints in the gallery. We’ve installed six of them on the wall, with a sort of Warhol effect. Muzondo’s works are in the Permanent Collection of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. His sculpture War Victim (1982) was used on a commemorative stamp in 1988. The master carver’s stone sculpture and graphics have been exhibited in solo and group shows in the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, the United States, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.His signed, numbered limited edition linocuts draw avid collectors in Africa, Europe and the United States.