Innocence of childhood captured
Berruti uses rough, poor, live material such as jute in his frescos
AN INNOVATIVE engagement with Africa is on view at the SMAC Gallery, in Stellenbosch, with Italian artist Valerio Berruti, (the youngest Italian artist to exhibit at the Venice Biennale), demonstrating his engagement with South Africa for the last two years. He completed a two-year residency at the Pola Museum in Tokyo, Japan, before coming here.
The exhibition, titled Udaka (meaning mud in Zulu), is Berruti’s inaugural exhibition in South Africa. The works feature the use of frescoes applied to jute. The use of jute is consonant with the exhibition’s emphasis on authenticity and innocence.
The use of natural materials and colours derived from the soil is taken further in multi-media installations and video projections.
The exhibition makes good use of the gallery’s lighting, with a series of frescoes of a child playing with a ball, almost as if in animation, as one fresco after another depicts the exact movements of the child. The effect this creates is one of innocence and simplicity, and an unmediated experience with the world. This feature is further enhanced by another work, of a cement statue of a child crouched on a vast expanse of red soil, simply observing.
This theme of innocence and purity is then echoed in the video presentations, and various depictions of the “child in the world”, on which Berruti has been working in collaboration with the Nirox Foundation, situated in the Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng.
It is here where he conceptualised this body of works based on a young African child whom he met in a school, near the foundation, that he had visited during the development of his project, explains curator, Martina Venturi.
Venturi explains that Berruti’s works represent childhood as symbol of purity and naivete in all of us: “The child depicted transmits innocence, fragility, vulnerability and nostalgia. Berruti uses rough, poor and live material such as jute in his frescos. The choice of this medium is unique for a contemporary artist. Soil and mud are used throughout the works in the exhibition and represent the conflict and turmoil of a deeply troubled land.”
Entering in the gallery the viewer is faced with an installation of 10 monumental jute frescos that replicate a reel of moving images.
“The viewer becomes an active participant, creating the narrative of the child holding and playing with a sphere painted using soil,” Venturi explains. “The sphere, and its associations with infinity and creation, can be seen on the reverse side of the frescos, giving light to a second interpretation away from the initial immediate reading.
“As a focal point, the sphere becomes an active element in the work, creating its own rhythm and movement.”
In the next room, the video In Infinity is presented: the 10 jute frescos of the installation are re-assembled in a silent animation, creating the effect of a reflection emphasising the shape of the sphere that then becomes a symbol of infinity, Venturi explains.
In a second room other frescos are presented that underline the essential moments of the video projected in the third room of the gallery.
The viewer passes through an intermediate room with oil pastel and enamel drawings on rough paper, depicting the child in isolation. “Here Berruti plays with perspectives, showing the child from different angles. The observer becomes the observed. The child emerges from the strong contrast between the grey and rough paper and the shiny white enamel that is around the subject, shaped by emptiness.”
In a third room we find a wooden-box installation: all around it, as in frames of a video, there are drawings of the animation presented inside the video cubicle. The title of the work is Ezinzulwini, Zulu for “in the depths”.
This work of animation, comprising 321 line drawings, is again of a child kneeling down and touching water. The reflection of the child in the water recalls the concept of the mirror, emphasised in the first video In Infinity. The soundtrack to the animation was especially composed for the work by Simon Attwell and Zolani Mahola of Freshly Ground.
The last room, as mentioned above, has been transformed into a field of red soil, where we find the child crouching, concluding the subject and vision of this most engaging exhibition.
The Udaka exhibition runs until January 19, at the SMAC Gallery, 1st floor, De Wet Centre, in Church Street in Stellenbosch. Call 021 887 3607, or see wwwsmac gallery.com