SHANE DE LANGE

HYPHEN AND SPLICE

2011-10-17T20:24:00.000+02:00

If hysteria was the pathology of the exasperated staging of the subject – of the theatrical and operational conversion of the body – and if paranoia was the pathology of organization – of the structuring of a rigid and jealous world – then today we have entered into a new form of schizophrenia – with the emergence of an immanent promiscuity and the perpetual interconnection of all information and communication networks. Jean Baudrillard (1988: 26)

When Picasso painted Still Life with Cane Chair in 1912 he made a profound contribution to the conversation of art that still resonates today. By combining found material and elements from the media into the painted surface, Picasso effectively breached the barrier between the real world of the viewer and the represented world of the image, heralding the emergence of Synthetic Cubism. Picasso’s hybrid of collage and painting included a clipping from a newspaper that stated “the battle has began”, knowing that the foreboding tradition of painting was under attack, and that a shift was underway in the evolution of the medium, challenging the way human beings perceive things to be, and providing a reservoir of artistic material for decades to come. Cubism incorporated the politics of the canvas, picture frame, and surrounding walls, in effect socializing painting. So too, an emphasis on the multidimensional and conceptual thinking, including the influence psychoanalysis and existentialism, altered the way we see the perceived genius of the artist, asking the question: what is in a name, other than signifying cancellation?

Asha Zero is a painter reverse-engineering these once-anarchic, now-traditional Avant-Garde ideas, hard wiring established Modernist perspectives to suite the needs of a ‘post-postmodern’ world. The numerical digit ‘Zero’ being a pertinent replacement for the authors name, Zero’s reinterpretation of identity and representation in the context of the information age finds an association with Francis Picabia’s Cacodylic Eye (1921), where the artist had his studio visitors sign a canvas on entering, not allowing for one single signature to be credited as the maker of the artwork, composed around a huge eye gazing back at the viewer. Parallel to the estrangement of the author, the use of body parts, particularly mouths and eyes, is a mechanism echoed in all Zero’s work, describing the almost prosthetic, cut and paste identities that humans adopt in contemporary society. Reminiscent of George Bataille’s theoretical method known as the Exquisite Corpse, Zero in affect creates a discursive ‘body’ for the current post-industrial information age. Similarly, in Erased De Kooning Drawing (1953) painter and collagist Robert Rauchenberg took the notion of identity, discourse and representation a step further, deleting the subject in his artistic inquiry entirely, revealing more informal considerations based on the absence and ambiguity of the author, concluding his thoughts by erasing a drawing by Willem De Kooning as an act of art in his own name, at once communicating the primary concerns of collage: intertextuality, appropriation, and juxtaposition.

Subscribing to historical collagist practices, notably the work of Dadaists such as Hana Hoch, Raoul Hausmann, and Kurt Schwitters, Zero confronts the medium of painting based on contemporary conventions such as schizophrenia, pastiche, anxiety and erasure. All under the guise(s) of imitation, artifice, and anonymity, Zero takes a cue from Marcel Duchamp’s conceptual art practices and Andy Warhol’s Pop Art wit, approaching painting on the same conceptual grounds as collage, depicting the everyday spectacle of human habituation in the urban sprawl of the modern city. Zero becomes a cipher, an indecipherable title containing no gender or name, the personification of collage: a cyborg. Borrowing from everyday media sources to construct detailed, photo-realistic compositions (trompe l’oeil), Zero presents the status quo of the Global Village as a bricolage, made-up of found objects (objet trouvé) and constructed bodies, using newspaper headlines, various street art elements, billboards, posters, album covers, fashion spreads, and print ads as pertinent social content.

Delivering layered facsimiles and masked captions from ground zero, Zero stumbles upon the defunct and deteriorated relationship between the original and the representation. Where humans once consumed media, it now consumes us, and Zero presents the remnants of this memory, pooled experiences faded and used, somehow tolerating the extraction of intelligible bits of information. Rather than being direct representations from some distant ‘original’ source or ‘authentic’ subject, Zero’s paintings are processed transcripts of lost and found representations, which have lost the agency of ‘origin’. The notions of memory and history are treated in an archaeological manner, mediated and weathered into the surfaces of the urban landscape, peeled back by Zero to reveal the remaining strata of our mediation, all too often hidden from us, or simply ignored and forgotten. “The informational function of the media today would thus be to help us forget, to serve as the very agents and mechanisms for our historical amnesia” (Jameson, 1999:20). Zero finds keepsakes from the fragmented landscape of the city – its histories and geographies incomplete – in order to piece together portraits of its cyborg citizenry, blip culture, raising relevant doubts about the Human Condition.

Stemming from a bourgeois Afrikaner background during the Apartheid era, saturated in the synthetic culture of the 80s, steeped in Punk and Indie Rock, Zero has a penchant for the appropriation of middle class consumer appetites. Forgetting and indoctrination being the staple of the day, the working class ideology of the Apartheid proletariat gave Zero special insights into the power of propaganda and marketing, and the social programming of the minority white population. In this sense, Zero’s paintings take advantage of the value of deception, equating perception with deception, perversion with reversion, at all times being unsympathetic towards any political agenda. Zero samples glitches and iterations from mediocrity, remixing scraps Xeroxed or stolen from popular culture, numbing as they stimulate, rendering the information age as bits and pieces, hyphens and splices, scratched and scrambled. If Pierneef were alive today, Zero’s portraits would be the landscapes he would paint.

This approach to the present day by way of the art language of the simulacrum, or of the pastiche of the stereotypical past, endows present reality and the openness of present history with the spell and distance of a glossy mirage. Yet this mesmerizing new aesthetic mode itself emerged as a elaborated symptom of the waning of our historicity, of our lived possibility of experiencing history in some active way. It cannot therefore be said to produce this strange occultation of the present by its own formal power, but rather merely to demonstrate, through these inner contradictions, the enormity of the situation in which we seem increasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience.

Frederic Jameson (1993: 21)

When viewed from a distance each painting appears to be hyper-realistic visions pieced together from discarded or found media parts. When each of the many segments are appreciated for their individual surface qualities, ranging from topological interactions to hijacked typographical vectors and dirty grunge-inspired textures, they display abstract expressionist tendencies, marking a sea-change in the context of Modern painting. Simultaneously multiple and singular, Zero’s paintings dictate impossible exchanges between different surfaces in a continuous sedimentation of information.

Zero’s own ambiguous identity poses a similar question, where the authenticity of the author gives way to the representation of the brand; a sentiment relayed by Guy Debord (2004:12) when he states: “The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become mere representation”. With this simulated sense of Self Zero plays with the unsolicited aesthetics of the street, in an overwhelming image economy, a contrived society continually referencing itself, feeding off of itself, inviting one to consume. Zero’s paintings illustrate the sales agenda of the Global Village; so pervasive that it almost does not need the consumer anymore. The world is no longer about good or bad, black or white, ones and zeros; it is no longer binary, it is anarchic based on technologies that currently dictate the resolution of reality and the ‘deresolution’ of the body. Everything is transferred and transmitted under tragicomic circumstances, making room for the entropic madness of the machine aesthetic that Futurists such as Fillippo Marinetti envisaged being the culmination of mankind.

The reason I'm painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do... If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There's nothing behind it.

Andy Warhol

We are all Burroughs’ cut-ups, disposable, interchangeable, random. As passive consumers, compiled identities, and poster egos, most people are bored and nobody wants to change anything, shape it, form it, and translate it into a form of expression. It’s all about imitation, consumption and manipulation, and the only way to arrive at something relevant is to combine elements together, just as Zero does. This boredom is symptomatic of the lack of difference and Otherness in the world. Zero is the only relevant symbol, Zero’s cut-up images are a sign of the times, products of the system. Much like Gustav Courbet, Zero is a realist for the times, a traditionalist conveying the contemporary message of Zeitgeist in Babel, manifesting what it means to be human in the composite landscape of website hits and dots per inch, at all times leaving the debate open and playful.

Alongside contemporary artists such as Gajin Fujita, Takashi Murakami and Barry McGee, Zero draws attention to a society in a state of terminal identity, where the neurosis observed in the everyday becomes the norm. Marshall McLuhan referred to this neurosis as ‘narcosis’ (2001:45), which is an analogy used to describe our addiction to the media and our indifference towards it, linked to the idea that human beings and culture are paramount to a reproductive organ for the media and technology. Zero executes this narcosis through transient and ambiguous mergers of realism, naturalism and abstraction, somehow incorporating small pieces from just about every discursive structure in painting since the Renaissance. Silence and noise find common ground here, where the cosmetic fabrications of the media are expressed through hybrids of texture, colour, and pattern; chimeras that lead to continuing discussion on painting.

Micro Cluster Picnic progresses past Manichean binaries, in a post-hyperrealist realm that is inadvertent towards humanist or capitalist polemics and politics, differing from previous exhibitions, say for me (2008) and macro soda text hits (2009). As the world grows ever smaller, proximity being equal to promiscuity, Zero chooses anonymity over autonomy. Embodied and embedded, disassembled and reprogrammed, Zero’s paintings contribute more than just the sum of all parts, unfixing signifiers, stirring up turbulence, entangled in alienation and artifice to establish a clear-cut message. By piecing together counterfeit truths that can be bought over the counter, Zero makes the distinction between the authentic and inauthentic obsolete, perhaps exposing the only ‘truth’ left. History, identity, representation, culture, and the like, no longer teeter on the opposition between good and evil, or even tinker on the pitting of evil against ‘evil’, Zero simply makes such distinctions null and void.

WRITING AND INDIFFERENCE, UPENDING THE ORDER OF OTHERNESS

2011-07-06T14:38:00.008+02:00

"Venerated Villain (Kenosi)", 2011

If there is a constant to chaos it is dualism; where two Manichean halves clash. The vying of the irrational against the rational makes Africa the perfect breeding ground for chaos, where conflict, war, violence, and poverty in the wake of decolonization, global capitalism, and the resurgence of pre-colonial tribalism simultaneously condemn and validate oppression. It is from this ‘tragic-state-of-affairs’ that corrupt and totalitarian powers contest for ownership over a multifaceted and layered geography. Within this paradigm small pockets across Africa are attempting to find recourse towards identifying themselves, in many ways reversing the voyeuristic gaze of the West, becoming voyeurs of the West and vanguards of their own culture, in the process finding rootedness; a story of difference, and the indifference that prevails to destroy it.

Frank Marshall is a photographer who dissects the question of representation in Africa by focusing on a special outcropping of Heavy Metal subculture in Botswana. He does so from a formal photographic stance and as a sub-political statement, constructing an image of the Renegade as a pretense to the avant-garde. Heavy Metal is a divergent subculture, and its quasi-nihilist tenets seem to have developed into an uprising in Sub-Saharan Africa, provoking those myths and stereotypes that sustain the borders of supposed social order, dummy-revolutions, and apparent power struggles; all under the guise of victimhood in the shadow of the post-colony. What the so-called ‘Batswana’ Heavy Metal community is nurturing in Botswana is merely one of many encouraging microcosms of change sprouting all across Africa. The diverse manner in which this change is happening exhibits how the continent is calibrating itself to the demands of the Present and the obligations of the Past. With the Batswana, Marshall has taken it upon himself to document this process unfolding, one individual Motswana at a time (‘Motswana’ being the singular to the plural ‘Batswana’).

Bound by the Moon, 2011

Marshall tentatively situates himself as a mediator chronicling the assimilation of Heavy Metal by a group of Batswana rebels creating an emergent rootedness in a geography where tradition, politics, and tribalism create sensitive grounds for expression. These Renegades are almost thespian in their unconscious re-reading of post-colonial hauteur. This ‘performative’ aspect is a dominant theme in Marshall’s photographs; where the Machiavellian world of Heavy Metal meets the Manichean world of Colonialism, uniquely displayed in each individual Motswana portrait.

Such sub-cultural insurgences supply alternative lifestyles that veer from long-debated post-colonial concerns that either views subculture as a luxury of the First World or the corruption of the Third World. But such insurrections are anomalies attempting to deal with the challenges of Modernity, and the Batswana community does so through pure idiosyncratic rage in keeping with the idiom of Heavy Metal.

"Death", 2011

Increasingly, these subversive apolitical, non-traditional caucuses establish themselves unobstructed by the moral and political predicaments created by post-liberation, often corrupt leaderships in underdeveloped democracies. Although many subcultures exist in seemingly developed African states such as South Africa, this particular fraternity in Botswana is provoking a unique polarity-shift between the West and its perceived Other, allowing for a greater sense of belonging and fellowship amongst the Batswana Heavy Metal community, geared towards a confrontation with the persuasions and dysfunctions of Globalization and Capitalism. The Batswana take advantage of the spectacle cherished in Heavy Metal lore, parodying the larger Spectacle created by the ‘powers-that-be’, turning the notion of ‘Otherness’ on its head. The Batswana become voyeurs of the old oppressor; the West becomes the fetish, a novelty in light of the outsider status of Heavy Metal in Botswana.

Marshall’s portraits of the Batswana pose important anthropological questions about the nature of cultural effigy, specifically relating to pop culture, consumerism, and the topology of post-decolonial machinations. The stigma surrounding Marshall’s Renegades in their own local community also reveals a greater cultural chimera: they are the oppressed, steeped in the tactics of the oppressor, conveying this fact through skulls, scars, and chains that ironically put them on the fringe of their own society. Despite this, the Renegades keep with Heavy Metal’s primary archetype, envisaging a ‘new’ kind of African male: damaged yet intimidating, at the end of it all, with nothing to lose, subverting the system with his anger and indignation.

"Morgue Boss (Rock Phex)", 2011

In terms of demographics, Heavy Metal has historically been associated with those of Caucasian, male, patriarchal, Christian (by proxy anti-), and Eurocentric persuasions. The dissimilarity is obvious, but the one key similarity here is that ‘Metalheads’ stem from the lower working class, giving insight into the socio-economic strata of each Motswana, whom relates to the blue-collar working-class roots of Metal, its origins in Rock and Roll during the 1950s, and its connotations to the Hell’s Angels, all working against the system to find an original identity. This influence can be traced even further back to the machismo of the Wild West era. Africa being the ‘new’ Wild West, the Renegades parade themselves in leather boots, pants and jackets, jeans, studs, and homemade belts made from bullet shells; a material articulation of rebellion to say the least.

In this way, the Batswana have annexed unclaimed cultural territory, seizing a sense of authenticity and ownership, in turn upending the order of ‘Otherness’ by ‘colonizing’ a Western subculture. In this context, visibility equals worth, where music is a material currency, and performance is an unmasking agent revealing the West as a perpetrator of inauthenticity. To ‘colonize’, based on the humanist pedestal of Greco-Roman ethics, leading into Christian moralism, Eurocentric narcissism, ending in Modernist utopianism is negated by the primal, pagan, pre-Hellenistic tribalism, tolerating the Batswana to embrace a ‘cult of Dionysius’ as it were; representing the marginal folklore of Heavy Metal regardless of ethnicity, simply because it speaks the language of tragedy.

"Dead Demon Rider I", 2011

Tragedy is an intrinsic art form based on human suffering, offering pleasure to its spectators. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers mainly to the Ancient Greek dramatic traditions that play a pivotal role in the determinism of Western civilization, and by proxy Colonialism. Marshall accentuates this sense of tragedy by acquiring theatrical elements through Spectacle, temporality, and iconicity, illustrating the evolutionary strides in the post-colonial mindset from rebels, to revolutionaries, to Renegades. In this way, Marshall actively mythologizes the Batswana, teetering on the fringe of fantasy and reality, bearing witness to the manner in which Heavy Metal is adopted and adapted in Botswana.

The historical significance of Marshall’s portraits is further emphasized by formal considerations of tone, color, and one-point perspective, using ambient picture planes, differentiated focusing and a distorted depth of field. His formal engagement with the street, and the African urban environment in particular, turns his portraits of Motswana individuals into ‘visions’, achieving a vivid painterly effect outside the confines of the artist’s studio. In this light, it seems ironic that Marshall’s cult-like visions can only be accessed through the tragic social rites of the gallery, occultist in its purist form. Marshall’s photographs are vocal about depicting a community marginalized by society, blurring the boundaries between liberty and fraternity. Marshall’s Renegade’s have found a semblance of an answer by co-opting Heavy Metal, finding a substitute for the lack of answers produced by the Post-colonial enquiry, permitting them to embrace anything that popular culture finds unacceptable, proving the manner in which Africa is calibrating itself to an increasingly homogenized world.

"Loyal to None", 2011

BETWEEN THE SYSTEM AND THE STRUGGLE

2011-05-09T12:54:00.009+02:00

The Bang Bang Club is a tagline baptized upon a group of politically active photographic journalists who chronicled the intense social upheavals during the early 90s, nearing the end of the Apartheid era in South Africa. The group had four key members: João Silva, Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, and Ken Oosterbroek. Other noteworthy photographers, such as James Nachtwey, Abdul Shariff, and Gary Bernard, often accompanied the Bang Bang Club but always remained peripheral figures. Working within the volatile atmosphere of the time the Bang Bang Club documented scenes that were normally beyond the comprehension of the often-uninformed population living in Apartheid stricken South Africa. They were most prolific from the time when Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 to the first non-racial Democratic elections in 1994.

The nomenclature surrounding the groups’ title has many roots. Originally, the name Bang Bang Club was appropriated from an article in Living magazine called the Bang Bang Paparazzi, describing the actions of few intrepid photojournalists who would impulsively enter the surrounding townships of Johannesburg, commonly regarded as a no man’s land, capturing images that announced to the world that the sugar-coated façade of Apartheid was in actual fact a reign of terror governing the country. The term Paparazzi was thought to be a misleading description of the groups’ intentions, hence the slight alteration to club, which also allows for an ironic play on the abbreviation “BBC”. The name can also be derived from the township culture itself, where residents would use the phrase "bang-bang" to describe the all to common violence within their communities, literally referring to the sound of gunfire.

Greg and Kevin are the only South African’s to have been awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for their respective photographic achievements. João and Greg are the only surviving members from the original four, and are co-authors of the autobiographical book titled The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War (with a foreword written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu). The book is based on selected experiences and fragmented memories linked to the now vintage, highly collectable photographs of the Bang Bang Club. The book establishes how close friendships developed between the four members in trying to deal with their own psychological and moral dilemmas during the civil unrest. The dedication that the Bang Bang Club expressed towards their craft led to a lot of emotional turmoil and many close encounters with death, eventually leading to the passing of two members. Ken was killed by crossfire during a gunfight between the National Peacekeeping Force and African National Congress supporters in Tokoza in 1994 (Greg was seriously injured during this event). In July of that same year Kevin committed suicide, barely three months after South Africa’s first democratic elections.

The photographs taken by the Bang Bang Club from this period form the foundation of the book, and are crucial historical artifacts that bear witness to the struggle, oppression, and conflict that became convention at the time. The images also suggest the internal conflict experienced by the members of the Bang Bang Club, each having to respond to the pendulum flow of their ethical responsibility to take the pictures rather than intervene in the situation based on moral obligations. The predicament of witnessing tragic events without attempting to prevent them because the published images would help to expose the larger terror was the bonding factor for all the members of the Bang Bang Club. Their attempts to remain unaffected by switching-off emotionally can also be seen as symptomatic of the times.

The Bang Bang Club fell outside the idyllic social norms dictated by the hegemonic Apartheid regime. They were, however, insiders trying to reveal the real events behind the scenes that kept the sovereignty of everyday Apartheid life from crumbling. The day-to-day atrocities helped conserve the extremely comfortable means that the dominant minority white population saw as their birthright. For the most part the crimes committed by the Apartheid state were beyond the limits of public knowledge, and so too the majority of whites were content with their ignorance towards what was actually going on. By capturing indicting photographic fragments the Bang Bang Club helped create global awareness about the stomach-turning successes of Apartheids social engineering.

João and Greg took most of the vintage images illustrated in the book. Nearly all the photographs taken by João and Greg captured the rising tensions that resulted in many violent clashes between Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) and Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). As the title of the book suggests, the photographs reveal a hidden war, secretly choreographed by the Apartheid government, in which thousands of people were killed in the build-up towards the 1994 elections. The photographs are small pieces of a larger puzzle that reveal a political strategy designed to create a volatile environment, tailor made to make the ANC look like a terrorist outfit attempting to start a civil war.

The unrest was primarily situated in the three hotspots of Tokoza, Sebokeng, and Soweto, where the bloodshed caused by hostel factionalism between IFP and ANC supporters caused bloody clashes that were clearly linked to dominant political intentions. This disruptive and reticent form of propaganda took advantage of people’s strong convictions regarding traditionalism and tribalism, evidenced by the spikes in aggression when negotiations began.
The orchestration of this hidden war by the Apartheid regime was a failed attempt to disrupt inevitable political change. The Bang Bang Club photographs offer direct, factual accounts of this planned disruption, with some images perfectly framing government controlled security police alongside Inkatha hostel dwellers in Zulu attire attacking ANC held territories. The arrogance of the Inkatha hostel dwellers, who saw themselves as an elite caste of Zulu warriors, was encouraged by the government and used against other Black factions in the hopes that the White minority may regain control in the chaos. The images taken by João and Greg unveiled the sinister intentions of the Apartheid government, broadcasting this message across the globe.

The segregation of the Inkatha-Zulus in to fortress-like hostels created a microcosm of civil war in the townships, reminiscent of an Orwellian scenario where the state is ever present. This was a war of identity, a manner of subverting one identity in order to find a new identity; one that could deal with the immanent changes to come. Ethnicity was a huge issue in this development of a new cultural identity capable of fostering in a different South Africa where all citizens could be seen as equal, and difference was respected. A new sense of multi-cultural, national pride was key, but this did not fall in line with the fascist-like Nationalist Party’s political agenda. Thus the Apartheid government was a third force in the hidden war, secretively pulling all the strings. The Bang Bang Club documented these activities first hand, thereby aiding the increasing movement of anti-apartheid sentiment, and eventually leading to a peaceful transition towards independence.

The Bang Bang Club turned photojournalism into an art form, going to extraordinary lengths to capture the horrors that still reverberate throughout South Africa. Without their artistic efforts the violence and poverty brought about by the Apartheid regime may not have been as intensely protested. The international headlines created by their photographs introduced the world to the scarring events circa 1990 to 1994. The demise of Apartheid and the birth of Democracy in South Africa was a tumultuous period, and life-threatening opportunities to photograph history-in-the-making were plentiful. Resultantly, the Bang Bang Club regularly made the headlines both locally and abroad, bringing them fame and celebrity. The recent cinematic adaptation of the Bang Bang Club book, and Silva’s much publicized, near fatal landmine injury in Afghanistan, have attracted more public attention.

The physiological and psychological impact of the violence juxtaposed with their acquired celebrity is an important factor to consider in relation to the Bang Bang Club. They acknowledged a lost generation caught between the system and the struggle, witnessing immense pain and suffering. They sacrificed their lives to get the story out, shooting real, happening, life in South Africa. In this way, the Bang Bang Club comprised a special breed with different wiring to the rest of us. But that did not make them better equipped to deal with the circumstances after a day of shooting.

Although South Africa is still plagued with many socio-economic and political issues, those days of civil strife are thankfully over. The painful memories remain and there is still much to recover and much to improve. The photographs taken by the Bang Bang Club are a testament to the collective memory of a country that has miraculously avoided civil war. Democracy is still raw here. By positively directing the ignorance, voyeurism and spectacle of a nation towards the international spotlight the photographs of the Bang Bang Club are wartime relics, political artworks, and important historic documents there to remind us of the wrongs that can be achieved when political ideologies turn towards the despotic and tyrannical.

The Rooke Gallery is the sole representative of the Bang Bang Club’s vintage photographic material, which inspired The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War. All the texts in the Bang Bang Club book are pieced-together memories, based on specific photographs that are available for purchase from The Rooke Gallery. All the images used in this text were taken from the official Bang Bang Club site.

Copyright © Shane de Lange 2011.

THE DESERT OF THE REAL

2010-12-10T17:53:00.009+02:00

Study of Trees is a collection of photographs by Garth Meyer drawn from his ongoing, long-term project based on the documentation of diminishing primary forests in South, Central and West Africa. Throughout his travels Meyer has archived selected trees from critically degraded forests, saving them for posterity on film. His journeys to various countries form part of his artistic process, based on a conviction to document the ever-present human element that has lead to the depletion of indigenous and original trees.

Meyer’s emphasis on the craft of photography is connected to his cognitive awareness about the plight of the world’s primary forests. From this basis Meyer brings the poetic to the practical, using a now rare 11x14-inch large-format camera, known for the high-resolution and super-realism that it can achieve. The crisp, clear detail evident in Study of Trees allows Meyer to capture often-imperceptible visual information about trees, characterizing the subject matter of his work, forming his conceptual foundation.

Albeit an overtly romantic notion, the level of clarity and realism achieved in Study of Trees entices a counter-level of realization, framing that which is usually filtered-out of the human field-of-vision, or simply taken for granted. From this perspective Meyer has shaped his process to fit the tradition of nature photography, following in the footsteps of other large-format photographers, such as Steven Shore, Eliot Porter, and Ansel Adams. Unlike these masters of photography, Meyer’s documentation is a call-to-arms, communicating the possible loss of the subjects up for study in his photographs, trees-turned-objectified-bodies in a human incarcerated world.

Meyer’s emphasis on the documentation of endangered forests across the world has given him good reason to travel to many isolated geographies, crossing many borders in order to capture his didactic imagery. Study of Trees is thus a collection of photographic texts extracted from his journeys, branding his photographs with a personal, artistic mark, filled with introverted undertones, communicating an almost spiritual connection to his tree studies. Imbued with a sense of nostalgia and possible loss, depicted through hyper-realistic, black and white scenes, Meyer’s work becomes abstract through an overload of sensory information. This variety of realism-turned-abstraction transfers the disparate story of these virgin, untainted trees plagued by deforestation and the demands of the ever-growing, equally desperate yet indifferent human population. From this basis, Meyer immortalizes about-to-be-erased natural scenes, palimpsests for a foreboding future, where the landscape, without trees, would be nothing more than desert.

Meyer’s play of abstraction against realism makes his work inadvertently mimic late 20th century Modernist painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, known for their contributions to the Abstract Expressionist movement. Thus, Meyer’s photographs have a painterly edge; they look like paintings, rather than the other way round, as was the case with the Photo-Realist painters, such as Chuck Close and Richard Estes. Meyer’s unconscious hybridization of Abstract Expressionism and Photo-Realism allows him to build surprising relationships between the seemingly opposing concepts of realism, naturalism, and abstraction, making his work grounded on both formal and conceptual foundations.

This cross-pollination of realism and abstraction also alludes to the distinction between ‘pure pattern’ and ‘pure image’. Simultaneously, Meyer pays homage to the link between the craft of photography and the art of photography. So too, his images are realistic depictions of dying forests that are communicated through realist understandings of climate change, population growth, and deforestation, which require abstract forms of thinking and seeing in order to find relevant and sustainable solutions. Notably, the documentary-like characteristics and study-like approach evident in Study of Trees brings the differing worlds of the journalist, scientist, and artist together, in much the same manner that Joseph Beuys envisioned a holistic social role and responsibility for artists, with the key understanding that we are all artists in relation to our place, space, and environment.

Furtherore, Study of Trees challenges the common perception of nature photography as an industry that merely produces ‘pretty pictures’ or ‘coach art’. Meyer creates this challenge by subtlety mangling the traditional disciplines of landscape, still life, and portraiture in order to depict his trees in the most effective manner. Due to the fact that it is people that hold the responsibility for the loss of such landscapes, Meyer turns a study of trees into an anthropological investigation of sorts. Meyer portrays his trees as if they were people, contextualizing the idea of mortality on a human scale, literally becoming ‘still-life’, and further releasing his work from the realm of kitsch that often dominates nature photography.

From a purely formal stance, Meyer’s work is reminiscent of similar attempts to capture the essence and spirit of trees. Most importantly, the work of Inter-World-War Modernist painter Piet Mondrian comes to mind, with his prolific studies of trees (circa 1912, opposite page), which evolved from Expressionist roots into geometric abstractions, morphing trees into grids. The influence of Paul Cezanne and his tree studies on Mondrian cannot be ignored, specifically through his gradual abstraction of the picture plane, which can be seen as an ancestral root to Modernism. One can observe from the evolution of Cezanne to Mondrain a form of territorializing; a mapping of the landscape, a terraforming of the land into and onto the substrate. Meyer has poeticized this evolution through his own observations of the progress and destruction of man, and has transferred this message onto the photographic topology and topography of his work.

But perhaps the most prudent example in this context is John Constable’s Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree (1821, opposite page), made at the height of the Industrial Revolution, representing a desire and respect for nature in a time of rampant urbanization mechanization, and population growth. Constable’s painting, produced around the time of the invention of photography, poses a similar question to that which situates Meyer’s work, only Meyer is set within the context of a post-industrial, globalized world with a different set of problems, however stemming from consequences set by the Industrial Revolution. Some key photographers in this respect include: Charlie Meecham (The Wood), Robert Adams (Turning Back), Eliot Porter, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Joseph Sudek, and Sally Mann (Deep South). Following the Industrial Revolution, the Modernist worldview, epitomized by individuals such as Mondrian and Pollock, saw the landscape as something to be dominated, trapped, and owned: control through the grid and the substrate. Thus, it is apt that Meyer recalls their work through contemporary visions that alter Modernist hegemonies and systems of taxonomy, creating a sublime sense of consequence, neurosis and urgency.

Meyer’s socio-political commentary about over-population, globalization and deforestation can be described as a contemporary Baroque perspective, specifically regarding the counterpoise of his anthropological inquiry and the border-crossings he makes between the seemingly separate roles of the journalist, scientist and artist. Meyer constructs counter-realizations, in an attempt to portray the ignorant and narcissistic acts of man. Essentially, by suggesting a fleeting moment where once trees existed and only deserts may remain, Meyer comments on the bankrupt bond between man and nature, centered upon an examination of the human condition through the study of trees, elevating normal, commonly ignored scenes to the level of high art and quiet political protest.

For more information please visit www.rookegallery.com or www.garthmeyer.com

GHOSTLY DEMARCATIONS

2010-06-12T16:03:00.009+02:00

Based in Cape Town, and represented by the SMAC gallery in Stellenbosch, Anton Karstel’s work tinkers with the perceived loyalties and presumed modalities that are strewn over the scarred socio-political landscape of South Africa. From this foundation, Karstel deals with the idea of the ‘post-‘, ghostly in his conceptual approach to historical conventions and cultural dictates, always throwing curveballs at the establishment, leaving one wondering where his loyalties lie.

As an acknowledged conceptual artist, it seems ironic that Karstel’s most recognized works are oil paintings, a traditional medium proclaimed by the vanguard to be at a critical dead-end. However, his use of painting seems apt in the context of South Africa’s art market and political scene, where many artists and galleries resort to cheap conceptual tricks in order to make a quick buck, not realizing that the consumables they create for the market are tantamount to delinquency, with the system being a form of exploitation. In keeping with the tradition of painting and the legacy it holds, Karstel builds an argument about the value of art and measure of value. Instead of falling-back on over-used gimmicks and derivatives that dominate the market today, Karstel’s subject matter is relevant and profound, manifesting meaning in much the same manner as memories are distilled in old deteriorated black and white photographs and films.

Karstel is given allowance for using the institution of oil painting on conceptual grounds, granting him access to memories that would not usually be accessible to any white male stemming from an Afrikaner heritage. He excavates the archaeology of South African tradition and transition, skillfully portraying South Africa’s often shadowy, disturbing and corrupt, historical currencies, exposing the specter of ideological and political abuse that still affects us today. Karstel performs an autopsy on South African history, constructing a site, or body that is still being navigated and negotiated. His portraits and cityscapes offer us a grotesque and alienating reminder of the all too common ritual of history repeating itself, parading as nostalgia, recalling the photographic productions of Christian Boltansky and Alfred Stieglitz.

Karstel’s paintings are physical, punching through the formal and theoretical facades of the materials he uses, based on the fact that it is ‘historically justified’ to do so, rendering the surface of the canvas a territory to be disputed. He interrogates the supposed ‘autonomy’ of the illusory picture plane, making the assumed homogeny of his subject matter apparent. This is evident in his Prime Minister series, where he renders the past leaders of the Apartheid era as eerie, almost monstrous, deteriorating apparitions.

By allowing his audience to contemplate this body, Karstel makes a point not to obliquely reference history, rather seeing it as organic and fluid, challenging the integrity of the original image and its related ideology. What was once equated with truth and power is now understood to be momentary and abstract. Ghosts abound, from Claude Monet to F.W. de Klerk, Karstel pieces together fragments of a not so wholesome colonial past that is perversely ever-present and extramundane today. He appropriates from these archived spirits their signatures, in so doing transforming his paintings into historically embodied ‘readymades’, found objects that effectively declare the impact that painting can still achieve.

Karstel’s tactile impasto paintings are both incorporeal and corporeal, his subject matter being ubiquitously present and absent in their plasticity, where appearances are certainly deceiving, evidenced by his Beach Girls series. By focusing on ideological signifiers, such as architecture, leaders, and objectified women, the fleeting and the fleeing are poeticized through his ethereal ala-prima technique, finding uncanny compromises between the past and the present through the ‘stickiness’ of the politically and historically unmentionable. One may say that this is an indictment of the represented and the repressed.

Karstel discloses the relations between mortality and morality, history and memory, thereby examining the mechanisms that construct our current sense of guilt, tolerance, anxiety and fear. The corroded hegemonies in his cool, saturated, low-key paintings sheds light on the ideological processes and power structures that make us believe what is ‘acceptable’ and ignore that which is ‘hidden’. In so doing, Karstel’s paintings, confiscated from socio-cultural burden’s and historical limitations, make departures from what has normally been regarded as either inside or outside, constantly leaving question marks where answers were once thought to exist.

Copyright © Shane de Lange 2010.

TRADITION AND TRANSITION

2008-05-21T22:50:00.026+02:00

It was September, late in the evening, and copious amounts of Shiraz and Merlot had led Kevin Roberts and I to leave the comfort of our loaded conversation, outside, around a warm fire. In our heightened state of awareness we decided to childishly wander off into the cold, dark bushveld on the outskirts of a hamlet called Rosendal near the border of Lesotho and the Orange Free State. Our task was to reach a distant red light, which looked to be some kind of aircraft beacon on top of a hill on the other side of a large open grazing field. As we walked I realized the fascination that often strikes me when I leave the city and enter the countryside, where it seems plausible just to forget everything and get lost in the vastness of the landscape; disappear, never to be heard from again. At the same time, one also feels an odd connection to the surroundings by virtue of one’s disconnection from nature and dependence on the supposed sanctities of the city. As we haphazardly stumbled across the uneven, cattle trodden ground an unlikely sense of awe entered my mind, knowing that we were about fifty kilometers away from the nearest town. Of course, despite the effect of the red wine, reason interjected and I soon dispelled my overtly sentimental ideals, falling back into the narcissism of human reason.

Perhaps it was our scholarly ramblings, which certainly generated some relevant discourse, or maybe it was the resonating image in my mind of Kevin’s painting on the wall back at the house, but I came to realize that the integrity of his subject matter is oddly reminiscent of the area that we navigated that night in the highlands of the Basotho people. The silhouettes of the sandstone cliffs, moonlit thorn bushes, and wind swept grasslands in the distance created an undeniably South African vernacular image in my mind that had an uncanny resemblance to the images in Kevin’s artworks. His idiom is interwoven with rich visual tapestries that seem tailored to the farmlands of the Eastern Free State where we found ourselves exploring that night. The indigenous colors, cognizant gestures, and considered textures of Kevin’s compositions are stitched and cross-hatched onto traditional themes such as portraiture, still-life, and landscape painting to reveal the underlying poetry that is diversely South African. Although much of the imagery in Kevin’s work is painted from memory, this geography in the Eastern Free State, with its cattle, corrugated iron roofs, grasslands, dams and irrigation, could be serialized as the inspiration for his paintings.

Local crafts such as weaving, braiding, and pattern painting seem to be dominant techniques that Kevin uses to customize the topography of his works. He unconsciously mediates the patterns of the land with the crafts of the people inhabiting it. Although Kevin does not directly comment on the socio-political issues at hand, he does appropriate certain activities and trends in order to cut and paste his mythology together. Teaming fish, chopped and gathered twigs, ploughed fields and sown crops may suggest some sort of commentary on the economic structure of this country, and many of these analogies were commonplace in that area of our boisterous voyage. More so, these icons represent the life sustaining flora and fauna of the land, canons to the labored over soil. This approach is also symbolized by Kevin’s use of fishnets, reservoirs and various environmental measuring tools, which reminded me that despite the isolated position the presence of man was undeniable, evidenced by the glowing red beacon that Kevin and I were traveling towards.

As we walked we discussed Kevin’s design motifs and how he fuses the naturalism of his subject matter with the abstraction of his metaphors to create a serialized and patterned realism. This vernacular is continued in his use of wooden parquet flooring and lattice screens, netting, doilies and lacey algorithms, which he superimposes and juxtaposes with flat or textured surfaces, thereby toying with the perception of realism, naturalism, and abstraction. The landscape itself becomes a lattice of meaning and signification, a matrix of symbols and archetypes born from human systems of categorization and organization (taxonomy and teleology). Cattle tags and plant tags, along with various other labels also suggest the historicism and materialism of the world that became obvious to me that night. Kevin did not seem too concerned with my embellished commentary of his work, making me come to the conclusion that he was somehow ulterior to the petty proclamations of the postmodern meta-narrative, comparable to the attitude that Jean Dubuffet had towards the foundations of art, or Michel Foucault had towards the structures of society.

By the time that Kevin and I had reached the end of the field, which was bordered by a barbed wire fence, forbidding us from reaching our target, he briefly described the infrastructure of the surrounding farms. Despite the intrusive economic necessity of human development, the rawness of the territory was still apparent to me. After taking some night pictures of the distant Maluti Mountains we began to make our way back to the house and the thought of a warm fire became quite a source of comfort to me. We went on to discuss this ulterior nature of his work, being neither traditionalist nor conceptualist, or overtly theoretical. His formal stance can be compared to that of a Renaissance master, but he clearly plays with institutional limitations and reconstructs traditions using rehashed modernist notions, such as deconstruction, fragmentation, and repetition. This is coupled with a random, almost contradictory knowledge of critical theory and philosophy, using notable archetypes such as the Jungian, dualistic analysis of anima and animus, which would certainly explain Kevin’s use of various, similar looking women in his work and his placement of texts such as the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in some of his paintings.

If one had to theorize about Kevin’s work then I suppose that, much like de Chirico or Magriite, his act of completion is established on the primacy of his environment, focused on the brutality the individual subconscious and the ubiquity of the collective unconscious. Kevin’s various overlaid, superimposed, saturated, multiplied, juxtaposed, and repeated metaphors, signs, symbols, patterns, texts, and naturalistic, illusory elements structure a humble iconography that embraces the ‘outsider’ traits of naivety, innocence, and primitiveness. He executes this iconography with the utmost level of skill and intelligence, creating a silent discourse around territories, universals, absolutes, and borders. His work is almost anarchic in its subtlety, abstract in its realism, tentatively and sensitively suggesting memory and history, diversity and difference, passage and time, containment and freedom, nature and culture.

As we got back we doused the fireplace outside, picked up the empty wine bottles and entered the house. Kevin started the fireplace inside and put some coffee on the boil. I began to conclude my thoughts, devising odd couplings in my head, such as idiosyncratic multiplicity. The final thought was that Kevin makes art that is neither postmodernist nor modernist; his approach can be described as non-conformist to such conditions. The didactic and cultural nature of his work always keeps the door open to debate, but he does not consciously make art to fit within the contemporary regime of South African art, and the often paradoxical character of his work surprises even the most conceptual sensibility.

VISCOSITY, CHAOS AND THE EVERYDAY PRACTICE OF PAINTING

2008-03-25T17:02:00.005+02:00

There are far too many individuals to thank for creating that legacy of fragmented corruption and clinically messy geographies, that have brought society into the oblivion of fake revolutions known as Postmodernism. The late Postmodern tendency to defy itself by once again, and again, embracing, and then negating, and re-embracing, oblivion only proves that the various, often fraudulent, perspectives and surrogate manifestations of pluralism are certainly the harbingers of singularity, ‘truth’ and eventually implosion, or death. From these ashes, constructed on the anomaly of redundant discourses still generated by the entropic vestiges of modernism, it seems frivolous to think of an artistic endeavor with the ability to alternate from the tradition of Postmodernism, and by proxy Modernism.

Mark Erasmus mangles this historical hubris into his own brand of pata-superficial, trans-formal topologies. His paintings, like territories, communicate dissimilarity through dissonance, toying with the implosion of Modernist formalism and the death of the meta-narrative in a universalized space governed by networks, isobars, and the relentless mythologies of a few dead men. Erasmus’s work is at once an ode to the meta-narrative, and by default a negation of the meta-narrative, thereby visually manifesting the concept of singularity on the canvas using his invented and didactic materialism of paint. His paintings express an allegory to abstraction through the reality of paint and the physics that dictate the behavior of the surface.

At first glance one could easily excuse Erasmus’s paintings as pseudo-formalist modernist clones, verging on copies of Morris Louis or Piet Mondrian, much like the contemporary work of Sarah Morris. However, one would be mistaken in making such an assumption, simply because these paintings do not conform to the limitations of the ‘new’ or the ‘post-‘, two concepts that have saturated the last one hundred and fifty years. Erasmus arduously infects his brand of formalism through a processed and networked neo-platonic dissimulation, fairly reminiscent of works by Jim Lambie or Ian Davenport. Erasmus seems to play with the physicality and plasticity of the illusory, two-dimensional surface, through the reverse engineering of institutions in color, space, material and surface. He constructs his monument backwards through a fission of formalism and expressionism, physics and spirituality, randomness and pattern.

Erasmus sees color as an illusion created by the viewers reading and understanding of the surface, and in a ubiquitous manner he uses many visual tenets from tradition to execute his highly conceptual paintings. The most notable of these tenets are superimposition, juxtaposition and the repetition of line, either through meshing or cross-hatching, or simply focusing on verticality alone, and layering. Flat surfaces are also texturally built-up, reminding one of the layered artworks made by Angela de Cruz, agitating the density of the surface to the point of destruction, or Shozo Shimamoto embracing fateful, often destructive processes and events to reveal the seriality and conceptualism of layering.

Erasmus’s process easily tricks observers into thinking that his paintings have been arduously masked, when in actuality he drips and pours paint, using no brushes or masking tools, over an angled surface, using his own viscous recipe and chance events forced by gravity and the surrounding environment to create an illusion of the pure and rational image (the horizontal and the vertical). As a result, critics of Erasmus’s work have rehashed that already exhausted discourse surrounding the death of painting, but it can be argued that Erasmus’s painterly approach is more conceptual, creating an undertone that shudders the declaration: “death for death’s sake”. Erasmus introduces a new perspective on the ‘new’ to the viewer, tolerating the notion that the physical make-up, composition, viscosity, and color relations of paint have not nearly been understood enough for painting to merely wither away.

There are far too many individuals who don’t know enough about paint, and those artists who claim to have this knowledge almost certainly fall into that closed box of bogus romantics; the proverbial “art shaped whole”. Erasmus makes no such rash claims; he grew up in a family of paint chemists, working commercially with the viscous material everyday since he was a child. His art making is based on a very real, lifelong experience of paint, quite literally making the act of painting part of his lived life and his livelihood. Erasmus’s perspective on paint is surely an alternative to that overbearing, pseudo-romantic notion of the archetypal artist that many painters are seduced by, which is perhaps why the declaration of the death of painting is so predominant, and critics are so quick to point it out. Erasmus does not even attempt to think outside the box, he dismantles it slowly from the inside.

Erasmus’s painterly background turns the mere act of mixing paint into an organic and instinctual practice. Practices can be described as actions that are learned and repeatable, but Erasmus turns this understanding into a ritual teetering on religion that defies any structure but looks structural. Painting is a natural and scientific tendency in Erasmus’s work, starting with the mathematics of painting, constructing his composition in that voided space suggested by the enigmatic grid. He intuitively relates to the matrix, reading its anomalies in relation to the quirks of his mixed paint, allowing the architecture of his substrate to gradually surface; its irregularities define its logical interpretation later.

Eventually, Erasmus seems to resign himself to the resolution of reality, attempting to depict homeostasis in abstract, visual form. The chemistry of pigment and the viscosity of paint resounds through clusters of color groupings, following fragments of theories and concepts suggestive of Pollock, Itten, Kandinsky, Rothko, and Noland, to mention a few. Chaos and order collide. Each color has a formula, mixed using a universal colorant, poured into a measurement of pure acrylic emulsion where the physics of paint communicates viscosity as the major concern in Erasmus’s practice.

The material nature and physical composition of the paint itself is poeticized and formalized, using gravity and the behavior of paint in relation to the environmental conditions (wind, temperature, humidity). The painting reserves this memory for the viewer. The paint becomes a skin that concludes Erasmus’s practice. The cellular make-up of the paint contains a discernable history sealed in the layers of paint like strata weathered into the earth and covered by time. Erasmus allows painting to exist in the ashes, because there are far too many colors to destroy, making him one of the few divine painterly tricksters out there.

4'33" (FOR DIGITAL MEDIA)

2007-08-12T23:51:00.006+02:00

The thought crossed my mind a few weeks ago to do a performance of 4'33" using digital technology, modern sound equipment, and music production software. A recent event focusing on performance art at the Bag Factory, called RE/Action, gave me the opportunity to take advantage of this happy idea.

4′33″ is an experimental musical work by former Fluxus member and avant-garde composer John Cage (1912 - 1992). The original piece was composed for piano and consists of about four and a half minutes of silence with an introduction by Cage saying: “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it”. Even though its first manifestation was for piano, Cage had originally composed 4’33” for any instrument, giving me allowance to perform a digital version in two parts in front of an audience at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg.

Cage structured 4’33” in three randomly selected movements, depending on the action, performer, and setting. Thus, the beginning an end of each movement is not dictated by the composer. Despite this premise, I decided to compose the digital version in two parts, the first part being the original piece, and the second part taking the form of a remix. Cage did, however, stipulate that the title should reflect the timings for each movement, which is why my performance of 4’33” began at about 19:15 (after all the other performers at the event had finished). Unknown to me this was also about the time that the Imam calls the faithful into prayer at the nearby mosque. The original sub-title of 4’33” was “A Silent Prayer”, which was referred to by the presence of Lerato Shadi, suspended with cloth in a messianic pose on the wall opposite to me, giving the entire room a religious atmosphere of Christian and Muslim, East and West undertones (or overtones; whatever strikes your fancy).

I introduced myself and the piece, and then I sat down in front of my Korg midi controller, MacBook Pro, Tascam audio controller, a marantz amplifier and Sony earphones; surrounded by condenser microphones, KEF monitors, lots of cords and about thirty five people. I readied myself, because in my experience sound equipment almost always has issues, not to mention computers. Each part lasted about 5 minutes, including the breaks between movements and live editing time. As mentioned, the first part consisted of Cage’s original 4’33”, with completely random beginning and ending points for each movement, and 30 second intervals separating the three movements. I thought part one was fairly successful because most people kept as silent as they could, except for some late comers who did not quite catch on to what was going on, but the Imam's sound came totally unexpectedly, and almost perfectly.

After the piece had been successfully recorded in part one of the rendition, there was about a two minute respite before the commencement of part two. The chants of the Imam took up most of movement one in part one, so I decided to focus on that section of ambiance in the remix. I aimed the microphones at the monitors and left them to record whilst the remix was played through the speakers. In this way the remix was recorded as heard by the audience during its live production. Silence and noise was amplified, spliced and fragmented in a totally random manner, bearing no pattern except for some repetitive sections, with no interludes or pauses for about four and a half minutes. Part two was interesting because onlookers did not know they were still being recorded and felt free to speak there minds. Little did they know that I could hear their conversations very clearly with my earphones, with statements like: “what is he doing… Why is he just sitting there?”, and “is there a problem with his equipment?”

Once both parts had been completed, after about 10 minutes, the recording, re-recording, and remix was published immediately on an Ipod Shuffle and put up for sale for R2000. There was no buyer, which completely dumbfounded me, because I was sure that people would give anything for an Ipod shuffle with amplified, broken silence on it. Given this disappointment an edited and mastered version of the two parts will also be made available as a free download in due course.

The full title of this rendition has been settled on as: 4'33" (a silent prayer for Darfur), piece for digital media. This title was influenced by the serendipitous event of the Imam chanting, and also by a friend who answered me when I told him about my performance: "...fuck Shane, why do you perform these meaningless acts when you could be saving people in Darfur or something..."

Thank you to Johan Thom for organizing the event, "RE/Action". Thank you also to all the other performers, Rat Western, Lerato Shadi, Bronwyn Lace and all the rest, you guys were great. And, thank you to the Bag Factory for hosting the event.

Below is a nice rendition of 4'33" by David Tudor, a student and colleague of John Cage.

Video: John Cage - 4'33" by David Tudor

A CONVERSATION WITH SEAN O'TOOLE

2006-12-06T07:55:00.002+02:00

After publishing the Anticube manifesto in 2006, just before the second construction of Anticube as a solo exhibition, I sat down with Sean O'Toole to chat. The result of this conversation was the following opening speech:

THIS IS NOT A HAT

(An excerpt from an unpublished, imaginary interview with Shane de Lange)
by Sean O’Toole.

How many hats do you own, Shane?
Lots.
Come on – be more specific.
Um, about eleven or twelve, I think.
Any favourites amongst them?
The cheap ones, they seem to have more character.
You know, ever since I first bumped into you at the Bag Factory and you asked me to open your show, I’ve been thinking about hats.
Hats?
Yes, hats – you were wearing a flat cap of some sort. It made me think about the place of hats in twentieth century art practice.
Okay, if you say so.
No, no, Shane, think about it. At a surrealist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot ensued and wrecked the theatre. Andre Breton expelled him from the movement and grounded the cut-ups on the Freudian couch.
Now you’re just quoting verbatim from The Third Mind.
Damn, how did you know?
I’m a big fan of William Burroughs.
Really?
Ja …
How so?
Posthumanism.
Post- what, Shane?
Posthumanism, it’s a kind of ‘coming together’ of various ideas critical of the discourses and practices associated with modernism and humanism. It has only recently emerged as a buzzword in academic writing. I particularly like N Katherine Hayles’ writings on the subject. Here’s a favourite quote: “… increasingly the question is not whether we will become posthuman, for
posthumanity is already here. Rather the question is what kind of posthumans will we be.”
Hey wait a minute, Shane, one minute we’re talking hats and the next you’re headed off into highfalutin theory. Can’t we just talk hats again?
Okay, sure, hats it is then Sean.
Thanks. I find it interesting that you mentioned Burroughs, I’ve seen pictures of him wearing everything from boaters and baseball caps to fedoras and felt trilbies. He was a very stylish guy. His taste for hats aside, what is it that draws you to Burroughs?
Science fiction.
Are you sure you don’t mean Scientology? You know Burroughs was into Scientology.
No, no, I definitely mean science fiction, Sean. He was an early advocate of the idea of the posthuman.
Ah, I see you don’t want to let go of that word.
Don’t be so cynical, Sean. Here, listen to this passage by Burroughs: “The Disease spread, melting the face into an amoeboid mass in which the eyes floated, dull crustacean eyes. Slowly a new face formed around the eyes. A series of faces, hieroglyphs, distorted and leading to the final place where the human road ends, where the human form can no longer contain the crustacean horror that grows inside it.”
Hmm, okay Shane ... um, I’m not going to pretend I understood all of that but I can see the relationship between his words and your illustrations. I quickly want to talk about your wall panels – they tend to remind me of the American artist Frank Stella.
I suppose, formally, well, sort of, maybe. Here’s something for you, Sean. Did you know that his 1999 sculpture Bandshell was based on the shape of a beach hat given to him by his kids?
No, I didn’t, Shane.
Well now you do.
Thanks.
Thanks.

SHADOW FOLLOWING MEMORY

2006-11-28T06:47:00.001+02:00

"How would you like to die"?
"I don’t think I would like that very much at all". (Tom Waits in an interview with Vanity Fair).

Most people like to believe that life can be controlled and ordered, and that it can be an experience that will hopefully develop into a long and meaningful journey. Unfortunately, things do not always turn out the way people might like, and we often find out that we have very little control over our lives. Basie Yssel is an artist who finds these variables intriguing. Having recently almost died from hepatitis, and being a sufferer from diabetes, one might say he has a special insight into this enigma.

Yssel’s art is about the unpredictability of life despite efforts to predict it. He emphasizes the points of convergence and disappearance which form the various experiences that constitute life. This process of splicing reveals a hyphenated space wherein preservation and loss implode, or in Yssel’s words, where shadows follow memory. I see this transformation of documents into monuments as expressive of the virus of history. Documents freeze and record memories for posterity. Monuments manifest memory’s entropy. Yssel attempts to capture his angst and awe in the face of this flux. His working method and understanding of existence comprise a spiritual and systematic synergy. Quantum physics is an important influence on the development of Yssel’s art. Most of the time we tend to see only the things that matter to us at a specific moment in time, but life tends to exceed the sum of its parts. Yssel attempts to transcend petty views of the universe, emphasising the ways in which fate, chance and serendipity affect the imagination and inspire creative tendencies. We are continually presented with choices, meetings, and happenings that inevitably change the outcome of our lives. The embrace of chance and accident in Yssel’s work derives from his interest in Abstract Expressionism. Yssel draws inspiration from artists like Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly, who employed chance incidents in the art making process, not only because they propagated the unpredictable, but also because they emphasised formal elements, such as texture, plasticity, and juxtaposition, which underlie, and often become, the subject matter of an artwork. Often these formal elements are mixed with transcendental ideals, thus merging the physical and the metaphysical. Using this as a point of departure, Yssel introduces the element of figuration into his work. This figuration is always suggestive and vague, primarily allowing the viewer to construct her/his own image.

While serendipity is central to Yssel’s work, he also makes recourse to a more controlled and objective use of symmetry, balance and harmony.

Yssel has been using computer technologies as a tool for art making for many years, and he is probably one of the first artists in South Africa to have done so successfully. From as early as the late 1980s, Yssel has used computer programs such as Photoshop to construct elaborate greyscale images that are made up of various scanned objects and computer drawn dynamic elements to form intricate digital collages. Recently, Yssel has begun to introduce more traditional media, such as ink and wash, pencil, and charcoal, into his digitally altered images. He begins by drawing, painting, and scribbling out a satisfactory image, which he then proceeds to scan into the computer for further manipulation. The end result communicates resistance and attraction, raising both epistemological and ontological issues, specifically pertaining to the processes that structure reality, knowledge and existence.
For Yssel, the lyrics of Tom Waits exemplify these oscillating influences, which Waits expresses as follows:

"My wife’s been great. I’ve learned a lot from her. She’s Irish Catholic. She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her. She pushes me into areas I would not go, and I’d say that a lot of the things I’m trying to do now she’s encouraged. And the kids? Creatively they’re astonishing. The way they draw, you know? Right off the page and onto the wall. It’s like you wish you could be that open".

Yssel’s work delves into the labyrinths of the mind, insinuating itself into the subconscious. The images themselves are reminiscent of Rorschach inkblot tests, which morph mirror-like into one another, hinting at ambiguous forms that often render our observational skills numb. Psychologists use these tests to evaluate the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients. Such tests are very suggestive and lead to multiple interpretations. A plethora of possible images hover in the mind’s eye, teasing personal associations from the subconscious mind. Working within the ambiguous parameters of concrete and abstract, known and unknown, Yssel creates an interplay of opposites and parallels; schisms and unions.

Chaos and expression, uncertainty and confidence, pattern and symmetry, balance and harmony are all dissected in his images. Consciousness and intent can be found alongside uncertainty and vagueness in Yssel’s particular point of view. This is an artist trying to come to terms with the eccentricities of existence and the absurd formulations that accompany attempts to understand it.

In this way, Yssel explores traditional Cartesian dualism, focusing on issues of mind and body, inside and outside, experience and understanding, waking and dreaming. However, he takes these concepts further by placing them in a contemporary technological context through his use of digital media, thus emphasising further oppositions between virtuality and reality, representation and simulation.

These images, digitally printed on paper, allude to a continual state of evolution; yet they have a strong sense of stability and symmetry. From a formalist perspective this alters our view of what a painting or a drawing can be: if a pencil line is scanned, is it still a drawing? If a brushstroke is manipulated in Photoshop, is it painting?

Yssel’s art probes into the vanishing points of life and along the mind’s horizon line. The area of convergence cannot exist without the splitting point. He makes traditional binary oppositions and dualistic distinctions unclear and morphs them into a digital aesthetic that is indicative of how the media and technology have become a dominant factor in the way we live our lives, physically and metaphysically. By delving into the psyche, Yssel’s work blurs the boundary between the observer and the observed, destabilising the relationship between subject and object, allowing viewers to stop and look into themselves. Between the picture and the mental projection, the viewer’s own interpretations are engaged. One becomes conscious of one’s own subconscious thoughts. The artwork gazes at you, or rather turns your gaze towards you.

I wrote this text for Basie's exhibition catalog, coordinated by Abrie Fourie and Harry Siertsema for the Map project, in September 2006. Basie Yssel died on the 21st of December 2006.

LOST IN THE POST

2006-11-23T20:10:00.009+02:00

Asha Zero depicts a world molded by the media, communicating a synthesized and accelerated society. Zero’s hyperrealistic painted collages express the pastiche of audio and visual simulations that have developed into the anxieties of the present day. His work suggests a kind of neurosis that most people seem to experience in the present Orwellian constructed world.

Zero exposes us to the media spectacle of the global village by juxtaposing many traditional modernist approaches, such as collage, gestural painting, and pop elements, with more contemporary elements and concepts, such as Neo-expressionism, graffiti, and electro-clash design. Extracts from torn tabloid icons and celebrity magazine cut-ups are pieced together to assemble ‘über-cosmetic’ and ‘pseudo-idealistic’ deformations. By sacrificially mutilating already established modernist perspectives, Zero turns plasticity into plastic living, and manages to expose the dissident of postmodernism. Zero embraces the comedy of the techno-urban environment in its entire tragic splendor, finding parallels between the angst we feel inside the city, and the awe we feel outside of it. In this way, zero creates a poisonous concept of lethargy as a cathartic cure to an over-accelerated instantaneous world of glitches and delays.

As the world becomes ever smaller with the growth of media orientated technologies and the increased speed-up of networks, proximity is often equated with promiscuity, covering the world in a blanket of globalization and westernization. This is a schizophrenic space that Zero relates to in an equally schizophrenic fashion through his use of various guises. He plays with various aliases in an attempt to negate his own identity, choosing anonymity over autonomy. Zero delivers a perspective of a downloaded reality in the midst of a smoldering consumerist society which has a special affinity to the techno-organic space of the city, where the individual merely becomes a cipher in a buzz of cellular automata. Spectacular culture has saturated the globe in a haze of electronic media that brings traditional modernist notions of identity into question. Zero’s ‘trans-politics’ filters out the capitalistic and consumerist elements that structure western existence by utilizing clippings from the very advertisements, tabloid photo’s, and television programs that propagate the supposed coherence of society.

Zero draws much of his inspiration from music videos, cult films, poster and album cover art, because they are indicative of, or rather they render an awareness of, a late capitalistic, postmodern era. Such imagery is also evident in the billboards, MTV blips, and humming fast food signs that surround us. Zero simply makes this sublime situation apparent in a funny and sometimes juvenile manner, supported by his refined sensibility and wit.

Zero is careful not to conform to a singular or autonomous individuality, but rather incorporates a number of brands into his idiom of multiple personalities and bogus corporations. Zero refers to these brands and aliases as his ‘collectives’, intent on confusing the assumed universalism and coherence of the global village. Zero does not have a preference for any specific guise, and he adopts these ‘sub-alter-ego’s’ as playthings of sorts. These characters include such names as Palinki, Broop Nook, Whatsnibble, and most importantly, the Imposter. The imposter implies deception and falsity, but it also suggests the all important poster boy; the face of the brand or corporation and the mediator of capitalistic dogma.

Zero, like many other artists today, dramatizes the fabrication of western, and westernized, society’s so called multiplicity, which has grown out of an obscure postmodern faith in pluralism. It can be said that our society is a binary singularity trying to cope with a supreme lack of difference in the world. With the lack of any Other, Zero is the only symbol that can distinguish and support the One. Zero’s self-denying pseudonyms are epitomized and controlled by two counterfeit brands called Roadvisionkilltoiletries and Mobilediscoetcetera. These brands form the corpus of his ‘collectives’ and subvert, or even invert, capitalistic processes of institutionalization. Corporations and institutions are mechanisms of representation that allocate purpose, meaning, and identity to things. Zero’s cut-up images are fragmented products of this system: a homogenized societal husk in the wake of a specific brand of modernism that has turned into the spectacle of market capitalism. Zero’s corporations are ventures that externally and conceptually compliment his painted images, and clone, even mock, the fictional basis of multi-national corporations, humanism, globalization and the like.

Various traits, both conceptually and formally, from Modernist movements such as Cubism, Dada, and Futurism can be found in Zero’s work. He openly admits to the influence of Dada poster art and often mentions the conceptual approach of Marcel Duchamp, specifically regarding his embrace of the anonymous, unpredictable and unknown factors in life. Following Duchamp, Zero’s images are ambiguous, and honest. They use capitalist, consumer orientated tricks and fibs to suggest many possible truths. Zero’s collectives are mutated electrical digital mechanical monsters that grow sporadically. They reveal a polemic of reality and simulation that entails an existence bent on instant communication and infinite consumerism. By painting his collages as realistically as he can, and re-representing already highly mediated imagery, sourced from tabloid magazines, children’s books and the like, Zero makes a serious comment about society as bricolage; a world that has lost any sense of the real.

Zero’s paintings are portraits that have been pieced together from the appropriated features of media icons and cover models that many people desire to be. His paintings are self-portraits and portraits of the viewer; they depict everyman and the overman. Such portraits make one aware of the various cultural masks that people need to wear in order to be accepted in society.

As a constructed and abstract entity, Asha Zero is a parody on consumer brands and capitalist politics. His ‘collectives’ are both the object of consumption and the subject that produces. His paintings are deliberate satirical reproductions of collages by pseudo characters that ‘exist’ in a sequenced and controlled world-wide domain.

Zero plays with contemporary societal issues, where Orwellian concepts no longer teeter on the opposition between good and evil, but tinker on the pitting of ‘evil’ against ‘evil’. Zero shows us his dreams of a sublime digitised and Xeroxed space that has developed from over-communication and an addiction to the media. In Zero’s world we are all impostors living the illusion of a man-made human-condition that is decaying from its own processes of modernisation. Asha’s ‘collectives’ attest to this universalistic paradigm of drone nations, cloned identities, and ultimately ones and zeros.

Latest article on Asha Zero : Hyphen and Splice (click here)

THE ANTICUBE MANIFESTO

2006-11-20T19:21:00.001+02:00

Anticube is an idea that views the cube as the symbol of humanism and the west. The cube can be seen as a signifier for notions such as idealism, logic, rationalism, progress, homogenisation, globalisation, and most importantly, humanism. Anticube situates the traditional, typically modernist, art gallery as a concept and a space that epitomises the totalitarian worldview that has evolved from humanism. It does so by emphasising the context of an exhibition-as-happening; an abstract construct in a solid architectural space. Art can also be viewed as one of the key humanistic disciplines. Anticube is an attempt to deconstruct the white voided cube of the gallery, specifically in relation to the artworks that give it purpose, and are, in turn, given value through the gallery. The gallery is the centrepiece of the exhibition; a kind of factory for meaning and value. The gallery is a cathedral to humanism. Anticube achieves this message by using and appropriating institutionalised and established styles, drawing inspiration from a variety of interweaving sources, and often opposing disciplines, specifically modernist movements such as Dada, De Stijl, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism, juxtaposed with postmodern trends such as Art Brut, Neo-expressionism, and graffiti. Modernism can be viewed as an era where humanism reached its pinnacle, and where the concept of the ‘human’ and ‘mankind’ reached its final narcissistic development.

The cube is the embodiment of functionalism and formalism; the symbol of modernism evident in the works of such modernist artists as Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, Sol Lewitt, Kurt Schwitters (Merzbau), Piet Mondrian, M.C. Escher, Donald Judd, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, and Josef Albers to name a few, all of whom have influenced the concept of Anticube. Anticube dissects the assent and dissent of humanism, particularly in relation to western societies death drive for power, knowledge, truth, and the abstract, evident in the modernist belief in progress, formalism, and functionalism. In this way, Anticube tweaks modernist perspectives to encompass the entire gallery space. Instead of being limited to the dimensions of the frame or the picture plane, the gallery is incorporated into the artwork, as the artwork, where it can be said to implode on itself. The beginnings of an interplay between inside and outside (inclusive and exclusive) begin here, where the modus operandi of Anticube can be established; that is, as a deconstructive operation that dissects and infects, injects and ingests, regurgitates and emancipates the picture plane by emphasising the hyperbolic issues surrounding such mechanisms of supplementation as ‘beyond’, ‘post’, ‘new’, ‘now’, and ‘then’.

There is nothing new, subversive, or original about Anticube, and it announces this fact. Anticube is aware of its dependency on the modernist anatomy that it is trying to subvert; a schizophrenic resolution at best. Anticube attests to a space that exists in the ashes of human moralism, in the aftermath of utopian entropy, where good and evil are petty and archaic archetypes, and evil is pitted against evil, making dualisms and boundaries obscure and irregular. Anticube’s ethos can be described as “Nilfunct” (nihilism, non-function), where the distinction between prophylaxis and virulence fades away and the indifference towards the other becomes acute. Anticube is both a postmodern criticism and homage to modernism. This schizophrenic embrace is a pastiche of orderliness, of structure and fragmentation, of pattern and randomness, which can only be described as posthuman.

By placing these ideas in the context of the gallery, Anticube stresses the incestuousness of the grid and the promiscuity of the cube, which can be seen as an analogy to the virulence of the global village and information based society. Anticube is also a reaction towards present communicative trends in street art and new media. It is an amalgamation of various disciplines comprising the so called fine arts, graphic and interior design, illustration, graffiti, and new media to name a few. This is a perspective that tries to expose the voyeuristic and panoptical intensity of western ways of seeing that tends to boxed-in and put things in their place; where boundaries are constructed, lines are drawn, and dualisms and hierarchies are created. Anticube expresses the cube as an attitude of bleached out indifference, a moratorium of the present that illustrates the limbo of postmodern living, waiting for the arrival of the posthuman. New technologies are only accelerating the human drive to extinction, and Anticube exploits such extentions.

Anticube is a paradoxical attempt to bring into context the whole ‘idea-of-art’: a discipline that has documented the history, ideology, domination, and narcissism of ‘mankind’ and humanism. Anticube celebrates and mourns the culmination of humanism in modernism. The artworks that are exhibited in Anticube, which comprise of drawings, paintings, and animations, play a pivotal role as constructs in this meta-narrative of humanism that is monumentalised in the form of the gallery (the cube). Anticube breaks-down the architecture of the cube, and it is itself a deconstructed cosmology that is very much under construction. Anticube is inseparable from the cube because of its opposition to it. This is why Anticube can be said to tell a story of dualism, revealing a mythology based, media orientated, technological world of instant access and communication. It reveals the anatomy of communication and the consequences of gaining access to the cube. This alters the notion of universalism in a western sense, exposing it as just another form of imperialism. In a traditional sense, to be human is to wear a mask. Being branded human is the process of the cube. Everything that can be understood as traditionally ‘human’, such as Christian moralism, heterosexual establishments, and patriarchal institutions, are at an end. Many of the conceptual drawings in Anticube attest to this idea, and the geometric abstractions of the paintings literally apply this posthuman perspective to the cube. Anticube suggests the posthuman notion, stemming from postmodern discourses such as feminism and post-colonialism, that the ‘now’ is a situation of ‘nihilation’, and the ‘new’ is a premise for annihilation through the indifference of the ‘human gaze’. In Anticube the only question that matters is whether to choose the path of ‘nihilation’ or annihilation in lieu of the universalism and hegemony of the west, modernism, and humanism.

Following from this perspective Anticube rekindles the already mundane ‘anti-art’ scepticism towards the art market, specifically in relation to industry standards such as the hierarchy between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, or the dualism between craft and fine art. This further questions the notion of ‘anti’ or the idea of the avant-garde, and how this has all become seemingly ‘traditional’ and institutionalised. In a sense Anticube is an ‘anti-anti’ that laughs at its own pseudo-schizophrenic position within the system that it tries to deconstruct. In this way, the influence of graffiti can be viewed as ‘low art’ (excluded/outside) used in the ‘high art’ (included/inside) environment of the gallery. The dualism between traditional and non-traditional, authentic and inauthentic, established and non-established becomes ubiquitous and ambiguous. This approach also suggests notions of urban and rural, which lead to greater social, economic, geographical, and political dualisms such as; orient and occident, One and Other, rich and poor, et cetera. Such hierarchies can be attributed to the actions of ‘man’ in ‘his’ attempts to conquer ‘his’ epistemology and succeed ‘his’ own ontology; a confused dream of progress, colonialism, and mechanisation blindly moving towards a ‘beyond’ that can never be reached without some form of sacrificial mutilation, auto-amputation, and ultimately suicide.

The odd characters and creatures (mutants) that accompany the grid in Anticube are represented partly to emphasise the story of dualism and partly to depict the posthuman. In some ways the characters, which are also inspired by much African art, inhabit Anticube as Other or alien, but they can also be viewed as ghostly or demonic. All these concepts find common ground in the taboo and deconstruction, which can be understood as a stipulation made by humanism and the west: humanism can never escape it’s ‘post’.

Anticube is thus a reference to issues indifference and difference, hybridisation and mutation, absence and presence, et cetera, in a bleached out and augmented ‘global village’. Anticube is not about action or reaction, it is not about questioning or criticising, it is not about rash pseudo-revolutionary statements and egotistical claims to reinterpretation. Anticube is about being random and ordered, inside and outside, transparent and flickering. It represents the illogical and disordered normalcy of the One, and presents the ‘resentiment’ of the Other. This is an unveiling of the indifference towards difference that the west possesses, and the indifference in difference that the Other experiences when the mask of ‘man’ is handed down to ‘them’ by the One. It is a present suicidal suggestion on the ‘beyond’ and how it will be in the absence of the Other.