A complex gamut of emotion
CONSISTING of a selection of works that were taken to the recent Art Africa Fair at the V&A Waterfront, and other works, this exhibition showcases a broad selection of various artists and methods of making art.
DF Contemporary does, however, prefer figurative over so-called abstract art. In addition, it is a platform for emerging artists. Interestingly, however, it also houses some more established artists, often showing an earlier example of a specific artist.
The high realism, the cartoon-inspired works – both as painter and sculptor – of Jade Waller twists art’s arm, as it were, to submit to the comedy and fantasy of life.
For she presents Bugs Bunny, stereotypical commercial advertisements, her illustrative style beckoning to the fact that the surface is all consuming, that in post-structural terms, one is caught with the notion that one cannot postulate a hidden depth, an underlying structure.
At any given moment of time and at any given point in space, one can only measure empirically – and thus the texture and surface of reality. Only qualitatively can it be said that that phenomenon exhibited in the external world reveals a deeper structure which can be described in various languages, inclusive of mathematics and the sciences, and the arts in general. Yet that structure is itself “created” or framed by the modes and processes of the said disciplines. Knowledge is piecemeal and fragmentary.
Bradley Gary’s works are quite dark. A sort of stilled horror image appears as the foregrounded character either emerges out of or sinks back into the dense background.
Frans Smit impresses – he paints a traditional, historic portrait and then erases in thick impasto the face and part of the bust.
Other enjoyable works include Anton Castell’s sense of an ambient light showering young girls; Thembu Khumalo’s well drawn charcoal of the sea at flight or in flight.
The work on display at the adjoining Red Room is that of several interesting, more established artists.
There was an interesting oil on glazed ceramics by Robert Hodgins. It reminds one of a political cartoon as the caricatured fat cat holds his head in pride squeezed by his oppressive suit.
An early Deborah Bell oil is well worked, a solid figurative display of motion, colour and line. And a Battiss drawing from the 1980s – a contour exercise – or a sketch harbours the source for many ideas at that stage.
Let one not overlook sculpture, a highly effective and powerful form of art, the very root of supplication to nature gods, the earth and to images of gods in wood and stone and the like. Thus, its primitive roots have meant the wielding of power through coercion that a sculpture and a series of related examples can, in fact, steer the course of history, in which case art has, in fact, destroyed itself.
Hence one believes in art, just as one would believe sublimation of primitive impulses is better expressed in sport than in war, so if art is not annexed by other languages/forms of knowledge, it then runs the risk of a return to a vacuous variant of formalism.
Then one is confronted by Ruhan Janse van Vuuren’s “pilgrim”. Is the bronze figure in grey defiant and resolute? If so, the rather small figure is hopeful and alive. At least so far as inanimate matter can be.
DF Contemporary and Red Door, not by any means dwarfed by Stevenson, Goodman and even Blank Projects, promises a space for emerging artists and moderately innovative kinds of art. It also offers “collectables” of more well-known artists.
The gallery slogan’s, “Art without technology is poverty. Technology without art is brutality” (Anon), is quite strong, but I wonder if that does not simply amount to saying that art softens the blow.
On the other hand, perhaps art only truly exists in the context of an art world.
If arthood is therefore conferred in the context of art, does that mean that everyday life and art cannot converge and interplay?
After the art Africa at DF Contemporary and the Red Room. Until March 31.