Bronze age evolution
Dylan Lewis turns to people
The work is a lot more primal, increasingly exploring the interaction between masculine and feminine energies
● When art collectors bid for Dylan Lewis sculptures at Christie’s in London next month there is one creation that will be far beyond their reach: his breathtaking sculpture garden at the foot of the Stellenbosch mountains.
The grandest in scale of his works, the sculpted 7ha garden is populated by more than 60 of Lewis’s big cats, fragmented torsos and skull-masked shamanic figures.
Venues from Kirstenbosch gardens to palaces and high-end hotels display his sculptures, but none of them can offer the sense of belonging that this garden does.
“The garden is an attempt to place my work within nature, which is the primary source of inspiration for much of it,” says Lewis, contemplating the fynbos-purpled landscape.
To have a solo auction at Christie’s is a rare accomplishment for a living artist, but this will be the third for Lewis, 55.
International success over the past two decades has given the Cape Town sculptor the freedom to follow his heart. The garden took root in his imagination 10 years ago, the accidental byproduct of another project that required earth-moving equipment.
“The garden began unexpectedly,” he says. “I was gripped by the creative potential of sculpting the landscape with an excavator.”
He says there was no plan and he worked with the earth as if it were a form to be sculpted. “But I was also responding constantly to the sightlines, to the forms and volumes of the mountains that would then be echoed or translated in the garden.”
In creating the garden,
Lewis sometimes found himself at odds with his own core beliefs.
“I value wild nature, and not caging nature, yet I’ve spent years attempting to do that within this garden. It is a work of paradox.
“The garden also sits between two worlds: the mountain world above, which is untouched, transitioning through the garden into the suburban and urban world. That particular tension, the tension between tameness and wildness, is the tension that interests me in my work, or rather in my life, which is then expressed in my work. “Nature is a very important part of my psychological life. I work in my studio for four days a week and every day I go walking in a wild space or surfing. I’m constantly shifting between untamed nature and my studio.”
Lewis thinks the midlife passage is often a time of profound disruption when “it all falls to pieces: ideals, relationships, health, careers”, but also a time to discover one’s authentic path. The garden reflects his journey “to selfacceptance and nonjudgment”.
Towering over it is a giant abstract form, which at first glance looks nothing like the sleek bronze cats that prowl below. But close up the connections between them spark: the sculptures, says Lewis, are meditations on the “untamed forces within us all”.
What he calls “sketches” — flowing male and female forms, some of which look poised to take flight, show the trajectory of his latest work.
For five years Lewis has been working on a new body of work that he will begin to unveil in February.
“The work is a lot more primal, increasingly exploring the interaction between masculine and feminine energies. Some are more violent, some are more erotic. They are about the creative life force,” he says.
Eroticism in nature, tracking the beast (in the wild and within), the subconscious, and death and dissolution are among seven themes that have emerged. Often he uses bodies, rather than faces, as a visceral way to express emotion.
He describes this period as the most creative and productive of his career so far, despite a faltering start.
“Initially I had a period of hiatus, a period of depression. I needed to shift but I was terrified of what it might mean.”
Lewis grew up surrounded by painted seascapes, rivers and birds. His mother and grandmother were painters and his father was a bird sculptor. After his father died prematurely, the son also turned to sculpting birds.
He enrolled in a fine arts course after school but failed and was called up for military service. He became a conscientious objector from 1985 to 1989.
“Fortunately I was assigned to Rondevlei Nature Reserve, where I learnt taxidermy and was responsible for the museum display. I also created outdoor spaces,” he says.
At a crossroads in his mid-20s, Lewis enrolled in the Ruth Prowse School of Art, and later, while living at the Timbavati Nature Reserve, cast his first lifelike sculptures of rhinos.
He toured art galleries in Europe and immersed himself in nature and sculpting when he returned to SA. He became famous for his bronze sculptures of wildlife, capturing its raw power and beauty.
He has had exhibitions worldwide including in Toronto, San Francisco, Paris, London and Sydney, and his sculptures are displayed in institutions and private collections, including those of Nelson Mandela and the British royals.
Lewis was drawn to big cats and the leopard became his totem while he worked in a studio and bronze foundry he established in 1994 on a farm outside Stellenbosch.
“The cats held sexuality, violence and power at a time I couldn’t,” Lewis says. “As the story deepened, I shifted away from the cat to the half-animal, halfhuman figures, loose expressions of animalistic energy.
“Skull masks ritualistically signify an engagement with all that is wild and untamed within. The skull is associated with death. Perhaps life is about the quality of life and death we choose. I continued to explore that as my images became more human. My latest work is entirely human.”
Engraved in the sculpture garden is a quote by Carl Jung: “To the extent that I managed to translate the emotions into images — that is to say, to find the images which were concealed in the emotions — I was inwardly calmed and reassured. Had I left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been torn to pieces by them.”
“For me, sculpting is simply an attempt to survive what it feels like to be human,” says Lewis. “Nothing more than that.”