Melancholia is a soul-searching exhibition aptly displayed in a pathology museum - review by Chris Thurman

Business Day - review by Chris Thurman

Melancholia is a soul-searching exhibition aptly displayed in a pathology museum

At the Pathology Museum, UCT Pathology Learning Centre

I recently explored the University of Cape Town's Pathology Learning Centre. Tucked away in the labyrinth of buildings constituting the Health Sciences campus, in the shadow of the Groote Schuur Hospital complex, the centre is an Aladdin's Cave of medical history.

The former Pathology Museum, dating back to the construction of the medical school on the lower slopes of Devil's Peak in the 1920s, contains some fascinating records. Diligently compiled autopsy reports hint at the details of life stories even as they focus on bodies on the mortuary table. Black and white photographs that ostensibly served to document pathologies - the effects of syphilis, say - capture the humanity of their subjects in evocative portraits.

Most striking, however, are the shelves filled with specimens in various states of preservation: row upon row of organs, tissues, muscles, veins and nerves, resected and cross sectioned and lovingly captured in Perspex and formaldehyde.

They are all tagged and numbered, and one imagines how they might have been viewed with the detachment of medical students or researchers in years gone by.

But when you spend enough time with these bits of bodily detritus, in their amber casing that catches the light - and especially if you happen to glimpse some of the more discomfiting specimens through an open laboratory door - they cease to be mere biological matter.

What develops, beyond wonder at the human body in all its complexity and frailty, beyond curiosity at oversized or damaged or underdeveloped specimens (how did they come to look like that?), beyond shock or squeamishness, is a looming sense of sadness. Each post mortem that produced these body parts was the final act of a tragedy: a life that ended in grief and sorrow, or worse, anonymity and indifference.

Hovering over all this is the often grim history of medical science itself. From gruesome graveyard exhumations in the dead of night to experiments and autopsies conducted on those considered sub-human by certain forms of Western empirical enquiry (vagabonds, Jews, gays, Africans), scientific discoveries have often come at the expense of someone's dignity. It hardly needs emphasising that, even when they were ostensibly life-affirming medical advances in SA were made against the backdrop of - and to some extent were facilitated by - race based segregation and persecution. When, in 1967, heart transplant pioneer Chris Barnard was working in the very building that today houses the Pathology Learning Centre, a few kilometres away the apartheid government was passing the Terrorism Act in parliament and forcing people out of District Six.

For all these reasons, the centre is an apposite setting for the exhibition of Natasja de Wet's Melancholia (until March 30). This body of work seeks to give expression to the artist's own "experience of the melancholic disposition",

As De Wet explains in the catalogue text - a dense but insightful reflection on conceptions of melancholy that cites the work of theorists Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan, and draws art historical connections from Albrecht Dürer to Anselm Kiefer melancholia as a diagnosis dates to Hippocrates theory of the four "humours" developed in the 4th century BCE.

It has thus always been linked both to physiology and to a psychological state, understood simultaneously as temperament and an embodied "pathology" similar to those on display on the shelves that surround De Wet's work.

It is associated with the abject, like specimens of conditions to which the "healthy" individual is averse.

Yet, De Wet reminds us melancholia is also associated with analysis and creativity; it is not the same as depressive paralysis, and can be "a generative mental and emotional state".

The works included in the exhibition evince the melancholic binary (the chiaroscuro) of "darkness and lightness". This is vividly executed in the main installation, in which paint-and dust-daubed canvases and sheets hang draped in the central atrium.

A number of the smaller works, however, convey the life-and-death conundrum with equal effect. One of my favourites is the layered canvas in Slivered Ball of Constriction, which calls to mind a pair of lungs such as one might see in a jar nearby, at the same time as bringing to the viewer's attention the materiality of art-making and the artist's process.

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Melancholia - Catalogue essay for the body of work Melancholia, 2017

Introduction

Critical theorist Julia Kristeva (1989) notes that “for those who are wracked by melancholia, writing about it would have meaning only if writing sprang out of that very melancholia” (Kristeva, 1989:3). Similarly, my body of work titled Melancholia is intended to be an expression emerging from a melancholic state. This body of work is a personal exploration and material translation of my experience of the melancholic disposition. The work is an attempt to articulate deep-seated sadness and layered introversion, as well as the positive side of the true melancholic. Through an intuitive process of making, I intend to create an awareness on a social level of the strengths and weaknesses of this misunderstood temperament. This text serves to provide insight into the theoretical and art historical precedents of this exhibition. It will consider the disposition of melancholia in more critical depth, particularly as it relates to the materiality and process involved in the making of this body of work.

Defining Melancholia

The definition of melancholia originated with the Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BC), who incorporated into his medical practise the idea of the ‘four humours’: melancholic, sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic. Each humour was associated with a different colour. Hippocrates attributed the melancholic state to the excess of black bile (sanguine was red blood, choleric was yellow bile and phlegmatic was seen as white or clear) (Telles-Correia & Marques, 2015:1). According to Hippocrates, melancholia was a psychological disposition prone to fear and sadness.

Perhaps because of this initial conception, historically, melancholia has been associated with artists, due to their propensity to dwell pensively on the world around them. Printmaker Albrecht Dürer provides an apt example of this idea of the melancholic artist in his engraving titled Melancholia 1 (1514). The work is an illustration of a figure whose posture is an outward expression of the undefinable inner emotional landscape of melancholia. Visually evoking Hippocrates’ idea that melancholia “formed” in the body as a result of physiological imbalances, this figurative portrayal of the temperament is imbued with a sense of dejectedness. The figure’s gaze speaks of deep sadness and a longing for understanding. These emotional states have been used to describe melancholia; however, the melancholic condition has historically been, and still is, elusive to define.

Melancholia and Abjection

Post-critical thinker and psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan (1992) speaks about the melancholic state as a constant feeling of something lost and unreachable, but melancholia, despite its long-held link to the colour black and darkness, should not be mistaken for depression (Lacan, 1992:60). This distinction – the idea that melancholia may hold something other than darkness or depression, something compelling and vital – is significant in contemporary understandings of the disposition. The abject may be considered as a fundamental component of melancholia. Kristeva (1982) describes abjection as “the repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck” (Kristeva, 1982:2). In this understanding of melancholia, there is a combined sense of attraction and repulsion towards objects and materials that are seen to have been cast off from the self (Kristeva, 1989:8). This duality between attraction and repulsion echoes Lacan’s assertion that the melancholic constitution is not solely negative, as is often assumed, but that the quiet depths of the melancholic experience are nuanced and potentially productive.

In this project, I have engaged with this conception of melancholia as a generative mental and emotional state. In an effort to visually and materially translate the inner experience of melancholia in a physical form, the materiality of this body of work hinges on the intuitive selection of mainly found materials that, through their abject qualities, embody my own experience of melancholia. This material interpretation of melancholia involves the dense layering of canvas, in different weights, placed close together and bound by a mixture of glue, paint and detritus swept up off the studio floor, such as hair, broken feathers, dust, ash, small found materials and other ‘muck’. This layering of abject material upon abject material renders dense, yet nuanced forms that are compelling in that they are imbued with, not only darkness and weight but also a contradictory lightness and delicate complexity. The following investigation of this body of work will consider the binaries of darkness and lightness, weight and weightlessness, and inner and outer space in more detail as they relate to the experience of melancholia.

Installation

The installation comprises of a six-metre-wide central suspended work titled Melancholia, which is composed of many layers of canvas, bedding and other fabrics that are stitched and glued together to create a three-dimensional form. In addition to this central component of the exhibition are small suspended balls of compressed and bound fabric and a floor installation that was transformed into a work on the wall, which is titled Floorwork on Wall. In addition to these works are a collection of miniature sculptures or bound forms. The main installation is monumental in scale and is a grand gesture in contrast with the small, intimate scale of the other works. Ideally the installation is to be viewed from every angle to experience and engage with the totality of the work – depending on the viewer, this may be experienced on an intuitive and perhaps a visceral level.

The contrasting use of immersive and intimate scales in the exhibition is intended to draw the viewer into an experiential investigation of melancholia. For instance, the inconspicuous miniature balls suspended randomly from the ceiling, not visible at first glance, may evoke surprise or irritation as the viewer encounters them while viewing the larger works. As you have dealt with one tiny ball, another one might brush against your face as you move through the space. In this somewhat interactive process, the viewer becomes conscious of her own body, and perhaps frustration, as she negotiates the geography of the space. This process is intended to serve as a metaphor for the irritating, obsessive, analytical thought process of the melancholic disposition. Additionally, the contrast between the small-scale, intimate works and the immersive installation draw attention to the melancholic’s negotiation of the tension between inner and outer space. This tension that is evoked by the scale and installation of the works is reiterated in the materials employed in the works, which allude to seemingly contradictory qualities such as inner and outer space, weight and weightlessness, dark and light.

Detritus

These tensions are perhaps most directly and materially embodied in ash, one of the recurring materials used in this body of work. As the almost non-existent physical detritus of something that once was, ash evokes a liminality between presence and absence that seems to mirror the attraction/repulsion dichotomy that defines the abject. One work included in the exhibition is titled Ash in a Box/Prolonged Sadness and comprises of woodfired ash from several fires that was sieved into a fine powder and contained in a steel box. In this piece, the ephemerality and lightness of the ash is countered by the permanence and weight of the steel box that ‘fixes’ and contains it. This interplay between the knowledge of the material’s transience and the rigid structure of its container embodies something of the melancholic state – the weight and solidity of inward rumination is presented alongside its counterpart, a light and untethered quality that is imbued in the ephemerality of the ash.

In other works, such as Floorwork on Wall, a mixture of sieved wood ash, charcoal, black and white pigment and wood glue is intentionally used to create a grey tone on the surface of the paintings. The subtlety of the various tonal values of this colour evokes stillness. The grey ash used in this and other works is, for me, metaphoric of intense loneliness and prolonged sadness. However, it may also, contrastingly, be seen to symbolise renewal and potential for new growth.

The German contemporary neo-expressionist Anselm Kiefer uses ash to investigate and analyse humanitarian concerns, the human psyche and concepts of man’s quest to make sense of the world (Yentob, 2017). Matthew Biro (2013) writes that Kiefer’s monumental and expressive surfaces in his post-1973 paintings are encrusted with thick textures and innumerable found and mixed materials, including pigments, straw, clay, wire, sand, ash, earth, hair, lead, emulsion, steel, tin, sunflowers, shellac, charcoal, plaster, resin and conventional materials like acrylic and oil paint (Biro, 2013:48). Ash Flower (Aschenblume) (1983-97), comprised of oil, emulsion, acrylic, clay, ash, earth and dried sunflower on canvas, portrays a sunflower growing out of cracked earth in a large courtyard. The site seems to be enveloped in a cataclysmic dust storm and evokes conflated images of growth and decay. On the one hand, the image depicts a hopeful situation: new life emerging from an ancient ruin. On the other hand, closer inspection shows that the brown sunflower has been torn from the ground and hung upside down like a corpse or effigy (Biro, 2013:86).

Kiefer’s works such as Ash Flower (Aschenblume) (1983-97) and For Paul Celan, Ash Flower (Für Paul Celan, Aschenblume) (2006), are drawn upon in my own body of work as a means by which to consider how ash and other detritus may imply the obliqueness of the melancholic state. Like ash, other studio detritus such as hair, slivers of canvas offcuts, rotten industrial paint and discarded turpentine, are mixed with glue and paint and used as a primary material throughout the body of work. This detritus is layered within the organic, bodily folds of the canvas and bed linen that appear in some places in the work, creating the uncomfortable visceral tension that is central to abjection.

In Kiefer’s work and in my own, the aging of materials causes the paintings to change, discolour and decay over time. Biro (2013) notes that “alchemy also underlay Kiefer’s emphasis on transformation in his citations and motifs: witness his selection and handling of materials, which often aged, weathered, worn or otherwise metamorphosed over time” (Biro, 2013:85). In various pieces in this body of work, a mixture of old, soon-to-be-discarded oil paint and turpentine were poured onto the surfaces of offcuts of canvas and left outside to dry, exposed to the elements for months. As a result, dust, leaves and other debris adhered to the works, causing them to take on an abject quality.

Also engaging with the abject nature of a specific debris material, human hair, contemporary video and installation artist Mona Hatoum’s piece titled Hair Necklace (1995) comprises of human hair that is woven into filigree-like beads or balls to form a necklace. This unwearable necklace speaks of dejection, a form of abject beauty on display. Speaking about this piece, Hettie Judah (2017) writes: [...] in Hatoum’s work, hair is a human product, in the way that wool is the product of sheep, or silk the product of the pupating Bombyx mori moth. It is material evidence of the self: in its shed form, it announces the existence of its generating body (Judah, 2017). In contrast with Hatoum’s use of hair as evidence of the physical self, the detached use of human and dog hair in my body of work evokes a sense of fascination with the seemingly abject qualities of the emotional self, such as feelings of disgust, downheartedness, hopelessness and grief. However, in other works, the ephemerality and physicality of the human body is brought to the fore through the use of abject materiality and form. For example, in Fragility, oil, shoe polish and Podge were painted onto a surface and then peeled off to create a delicate, semi-transparent film.

The thin layers speak for me, of the metaphoric skin left behind after inner transformation, implying renewal and loss on a psychological level. This is also implied in some of the other works in the exhibition, such as Layered Introversion, described in detail later. Similarly, the work titled Surface of Skin appears to be a superficially enlarged view of a specific detail on the surface of the skin. This surface of this painting was aged over time; it was tainted and marked by the elements as a result of weathering and by the decaying substance of the industrial enamel paint. This work is still in progress and will continue to reveal itself over time.

Colour

Similar to the use of specific materials to explore the simultaneous attraction and repulsion of the abject, a limited colour palette is used in this body of work in an attempt to visualise the inner landscape of melancholia. The neutral colour palette of the exhibition is also defining of the work of Kiefer and Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012). A minimal, monochromatic palette of white, grey and black serves as a metaphor for psychological loss of colour that is associated with the melancholic disposition. In some instances, white paint on a white surface creates a subtle, nuanced surface that necessitates in-depth visual engagement. In these instances, there is lightness despite the sometimes thick object. Similarly, dense layers of black on black oil paint and found detritus layered in-between the sheets of fabric are used to create a physical and visual density that is evocative of dense internal and mental spaces.

Adding to this tonal contrast between white and black, matt finishes contrast with glossy surfaces of paint and open spaces of raw fabric were intentionally left bare to allow light and the colour of the layers beneath to show through. Together, the colour, or lack thereof, of the large canvasses results in an installation that evokes a quiet stillness. In addition to the meditative quality rendered by the monochromatic palette of the exhibition, the gestural marks on the surfaces of the works serve to contribute to this sense of creating internal order out of an amalgamation of various textures and materials.

Gesture

The expressive, rapid, bold and gestural brushstrokes on primed and unprimed canvas used in this body of work draw upon Tàpies’ slashes of paint and textural complexity of materials. For instance, Tàpies’ abstract paintings, such as Love, to Death (Amor, a Mort) (1980), are made with expressive blends of layered and gestural brush strokes. In Melancholia, subtle reference is made to Tàpies’ technique, which has been described as a “chance gesture with a hidden purpose” (Kuspit, 2000:140). It has been poetically noted that “even the artist’s gestures, for all their energy, seem like soot from a dying flame” (Kuspit, 2000:140). Similarly, in Melancholia, uniformity and continuity are formed by the application of this expressive, wide and dense brushstroke, and thick, black substances, such as charcoal. For instance, an ‘invisible’ line guides the viewer’s eye in the composition of the Melancholia installation. This line, seen as a subtle yet important gestural mark, orders and joins the various parts of the complex composition.

The Body

The presence of the artist’s hand in many pieces in this body of work reveals an awareness of the physical body that is implied in the materiality and form of various works. For instance, a bodily quality and the simultaneous experience of attraction and repulsion that defines abjection is present in Ash in a Box/Prolonged Sadness. The work includes a stand, which is itself part of the artwork. The construction of the metal stand does not imply strength nor sturdiness. While it remains upright, it seems precarious and unbalanced, as if it could topple over and the ash could spill if mistakenly touched by a viewer. However, the seemingly unbalanced legs stand strong in a quiet and unassuming way. The paradox of stability and instability that is imbued in the work is strengthened by the tension between the seemingly fragile form of the stand and one’s knowledge of the durability of the steel of which it is made.

Reference to bodily form is implied in many of the works in an effort to explore the ineffable inner experience of melancholia that is not easily represented. For instance, in a work titled Inner Constriction, the materiality and form of the work imply bodily associations that may evoke the experience of abjection. These so-called ‘balls of constriction’ comprise of tightly bound balls of canvas offcuts and a variety of materials that are used to form the centre of these objects, like gauze, plastic netting, inner tubes, cotton thread, wool, rope, old clothing and felt. A mixture of acrylic pigment and glue was painted or poured onto these objects and, in some instances, partly ‘floods’ the differently textured fabric objects. These balls are suspended from the layered installation and the ceiling so as to add three-dimensionality to the installation. These forms were quickly but sensitively made in what I term a state of emotional constriction, and draw witness to the psychological, inner world. Given this, the work may be thought to visualise the interiority and introversion of the melancholic temperament.

The layered, hand-stitched ‘miniatures’, titled Layered Introversion, are comprised of textural materials such as plastic netting, shreds of delicate clothing, previously painted on and used canvas, gauze and felt, and are carefully placed together to form dense layers of mostly monochrome colours with strong hints of orange in certain places. This work echoes the private, quiet space of a shirt pocket, that also has a bodily resonance. These objects can fit or be hidden away in the personal, intimate space of a pocket. They maintain a similar use of scale to that of artist Janine Antoni’s work titled Grope (1990), which comprises of eighty-four pockets from men’s trousers that are sewn together (Berkoviech, 2002:142). By virtue of the layering of found, used clothing, Grope draws on the bodily qualities of abjection in a similar way to my own pocket work titled Layered Introversion.

Process and Interaction

This awareness of the physical body was present in the processes that I employed throughout the making of this body of work, particularly those that were labour-intensive and meditative in nature, such as layering. For example, in Slivered Ball of Constriction and Bounded Implosion, an organic, spherical shape was formed through the use of time-intensive layering and binding of canvas, glue and other substances on a daily basis. After creating the form, an incision was made through the densely layered materials. The procedure of severing the ball made space for new possibilities. By sawing halfway into the mass, the inner fleshiness of the compounded layers revealed itself. By cutting right through the exterior of the form, the materials came to resemble splintered bone and internal cavities. To me, this severed oval ball reveals the inwardness and concealed nature of the melancholic temperament. The separation of the layers that occurred when the object was sliced open exposed the innards of the work, thus revealing the daily, purposeful and time-consuming process of its making. This process seems obsessive but it also reveals the careful, mindful, planning of the artwork as an expression of the melancholic state.

The layered qualities of Slivered Ball of Constriction and Bounded Implosion reflect the work of South African contemporary artist Paul Edmunds. Edmunds’ three-dimensional mixed media work titled Cumulate (1998), is made of shredded and layered pages of National Geographic magazines that are compressed and hardened with wood glue. The monochromatic palette, layerdness and time-intensive production of this work is echoed in my own and speaks to the introversion and meditative nature of process-based practice. Artist Fabian Saptouw (2015) writes that labour intensive work seems mundane and repetitive but has a purpose (Saptouw, 2015:1189). This awareness of the artist’s labour is presented in my work to articulate that the process of making the work is part of the artwork itself. Saptouw notes that “there is an intensity in the crafting process that should not be undervalued, nor negated using terms like ‘obsessive’ or ‘absurd’” as this “discounts [that] labour as a compulsion as opposed to an action taken with specific intent” (Saptouw, 2015:1186). In Barbara Bolt’s (2004) text Art Beyond Representation, the author notes: [...] a materialist account of creative practice questions both representational theories of art and the contemporary pre-occupation with the understanding of art as a sign system. I suggest that attention to the productive materiality of the ‘performative act’ enables us to reconfigure our understandings of the work of art (Bolt, 2004:149).

Saptouw (2015) notes that this “is a significant shift from the previously stated position of theorising about the work from a distance. This way of thinking about artistic production is also central to the argument about the intellectual value of process” (Saptouw, 2015:1188). In keeping with the idea of materiality as a performative act that occurs both in the making and the viewing of a work, the viewer might become challenged with his or her considerations about how process reveals itself here, which is only properly visible when the layered works are viewed in person. As such, it is important that the works are seen in situ in the gallery space and not via photographic documentation. By viewing the central Melancholia installation from different angles, hidden, otherwise unnoticed layers reveal themselves to the viewer.

The primacy of viewer interaction is also reflected in my process of making for the work titled Scrolls in a Box, which comprises of miniature scrolls stored in a canvas box. Tightly rolled and bound painted canvases, what I refer to as ‘private scrolls’, given that the information contained within them cannot be read, were painted daily with layers of glue. Glue and detritus were applied to the surface of the box and in the cavities in between the rolled-up canvasses. Thus, the surface reveals layers of substances, which mimics the layered, concealed nature of the melancholic state. The melancholic temperament occasionally wants to be seen, to reveal something or to be acknowledged, but is most comfortable when introverted and out of sight. Viewing Scrolls in a Box alludes to a voyeuristic experience, as the lid of the box can be opened and the box’s interior can be viewed, but the scrolls cannot be read. The intimacy of the box and the veiling quality of the glue conveys the dichotomy of the melancholic, of one that seeks to both hide and be seen.

As is evidenced by this and many other works in Melancholia, process-based practice enabled an experimental manner of making that allowed me to engage on an intuitive level with the internal psychological experience of melancholia while I was making. Ideally, viewing the body of work with a similar explorative demeanour might result in a revealing and rewarding experience for the viewer.

Conclusion

In concluding this project, one might consider Saptouw’s (2015) ideas about how process-based work relates to the viewer’s mind. He notes: “we have to take the labour into account when viewing and critiquing the work. The time invested in the project is physically manifested in the actual material object but also in the viewer’s mind when they view the artworks” (Saptouw, 2015:1191). It is this physical manifestation of time and my own mental and emotional experience of melancholia that I aim to convey to the viewer through the material investigations of this project. The body of work represents a personal narrative and portrayal of a life characterised by this temperament.

R e f e r e n c e s

Berkoviech, E. 2002. Janine Antoni. (Reviews: Santa Fe). Artforum International, 41(4): 142.

Biro, M. 2013. Anselm Kiefer. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Bolt, B. 2004. Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image. New York: I.B. Tauris.

Judah, H. 2017. Mona Hatoum’s Hair: Interweaving Strands, and the Artist’s Work. Online. Available: http://kvadratinterwoven.com/mona-hatoums-hair [2017, November 1].

Kristeva, J. 1982. The Powers of Horror. Translated by Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kristeva, J. 1989. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy. Translated by Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kuspit, D. 2000. Antoni Tàpies. Artforum International, 38(8): 140.

Lacan, J. 1992. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Nortan & Company.

Saptouw, F. 2015. Contemporary Materialities. International Science Index, 17(7): 1185 -1195.

Telles-Correia, D. and Marques, G. 2015. Melancholia Before the Twentieth Century: Fear and Sorrow or Partial Insanity. Frontiers in Psychology, 81(6).

Yentob, A. 2017. Anselm Kiefer: Remember the Future. Online. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUQuhoqTKtg [2017, November 1].

I m a g e S o u r c e s

Page 6. Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia 1 (1514). Source: Online. Available: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.35101.html [2018, October 5].

Page 17. Anselm Kiefer, Ash Flower (Aschenblume) (1983-97). Source: Online. Available: https://www.themodern.org/collection/aschenblume/1155 [2018, October 5].

Page 17. Anselm Kiefer, For Paul Celan, Ash Flower (Für Paul Celan, Aschenblume) (2006). Source: Online. Available: https://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/anselm-kiefer-Fur-Paul-Celan-Aschenblume-2006.jpg [2018, October 5].

Page 21. Mona Hatoum, Hair Necklace (1995). Source: Online. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2010/oct/12/psychoanalysis-unconscious-everyday-life [2018, October 8].

Page 26. Antoni Tàpies, Love, to Death (Amor, a Mort) (1980). Source: Online. Available: http://poeticacrapulistica.blogspot.com/2011/03/amor-mort-poema-de-josep-grifoll.html [2018, October 7].

Page 32. Janine Antoni, Grope (1990). Source: Online. Available: http://www.janineantoni.net/grope/ [2018, October 5].

Page 35. Paul Edmunds, Cumulate (1998). Source: Online. Available: https://artthrob.co.za/01nov/reviews/sasol.html [2018, October 8].

Note to Reader

Printed catalogue available on request.


Running Towards Yourself review by Laura Twiggs

Review by Laura Twiggs - independent author, writer, editor. 

RUNNING TOWARDS YOURSELF is the product of artist Natasja de Wet's 18-month long, in-depth exploration into the fluidity, ambiguity and tensions at play in psychological constructions of personal and especially, gendered, identity. This series of portraits is also a response to the existentially reflexive conflict around where the Self is located during acts of looking. Where and what is the inner Self as it looks at the outside world? When it gazes inward? When it is passively the object of an Other’s gaze? And is it truly either wholly masculine or entirely feminine, all the time? De Wet probes these gender distinctions and questions their validity as accepted foundation stones of identity and ‘reality’, particularly as regards the workings of individual psyche. 

Since 2006, when she first discovered Psychophonetics (a method of examining and using verbal sounds to enhance self-awareness and create deeper meaning), De Wet has been particularly interested in the notion that there resides in us all both an 'inner male' and an 'inner female': fundamental aspects of shared human psychology that are no less dynamic and influential for being discouraged, disavowed or outright taboo. Begun in late 2011, this series of portraits thematically continues De Wet's abiding idea that individual human experience is essentially a ‘journey’ or process which, whether undertaken mindfully or not, daily entails forging an emotional relationship and understanding with the Self – a process that rests on the uneasy reconciliation between a multiplicity of “selves” (both male and female); interior and exterior realities; appearance and experience; what we are with others and on our own; how we are perceived by others and what and who we perceive others to be. 

Without titles and depicting instantly recognisable common human emotions, Running Towards Yourself is an invitation into primal territory – that fluid “elsewhere” lurking just beyond conscious thought where individual identity and self-knowledge originate. De Wet's multi-faceted raw self-delvings create a “universal face” and destabilise accepted formulations around our understanding of what it is to be human – what it is to say “I”, “You” and “We”. By dint of their number and that of the emotional states they represent, these portraits suggest that any notion of one “constant” or “true” “self” is a myth. Narrow linguistic constraints (such as “male” and “female”, “good” and “bad”) constrain and curb true self-knowledge and ultimately, cauterise and impoverish our experience and understanding of self. 

The evocative nature of the series is due in no small part to De Wet's use of colour to portray mood, emotion and her interior world. For her, each shade has personal rather than traditional significance and her selection process is intuitive: green represents mental calm, for example; purple and violet express sexuality, sadness and plumbing existential depths; red conveys warmth, pain and love; blue symbolises introspection and inner peace. Combined with her signature drip technique, strategic employment of blank canvas space and use of different applications of brushstroke, contrasts are bold and vibrant and compositions feature engaging tensions between dynamism and stasis, chaos and serenity, what is blatant and what is insinuated. 

The result is a body of work layered with pathos and exuberance in equal measure. If there is disquieting vulnerability on view, so is there undiluted courage. Ultimately, to look at these portraits is also to be viewed by them. And in the exchange, there's a fleeting brush with a myriad selves and a disquieting reminder of human nature's astonishing complexity. 


UNUSUAL BLEND OF INFLUENCES

Review by Veronica Wilkinson - Cape Times

Natasja de Wet makes subtle use of the combination of her heritage and the global village around her

Artist Natasja de Wet reveals some of the complex facets of an enquiring mind in her works, which include objects like a chair encrusted with silicone rubber extensions that resemble strange, inert anemone tentacles in her lounge. 

A large wooden cabinet with glass drawers also arouse curiosity rewarded by contents like colourful resin “books”, ceramic “roses” (her mother works in ceramics, so De Wet has had the opportunity to experiment with the medium), and an assortment of found objects that range from dried snake-skin shedding to a tiny crocodile claw brought as a souvenir form Thailand many years ago. 

Add to these items printer’s trays, fossils and vintage bric a brac and the interior of De Wet’s home resonates a museum-like atmosphere. Little wooden replicas of kitchen furniture vie with ammonites and vintage striped-enamel bread and sugar tins to create a unique South African feel that is reinforced by her collection of Consol glass containers, in one instance ingeniously screwed into a ceiling fitting as a lampshade. 

In the bedroom her headboard is made from an old message board at Valkenburg Hospital: the source of many of her curious-collections that include a wall-mounted glass cabinet containing a pile of rusted old-fashioned keys with stamped and coded metal tags attached. The items were acquired during the period when she rented a ward as studio space at Oude Molen near the old psychiatric institution. 

These days her garage doubles as a studio where her creative impulses are articulated into two and three-dimensional artworks stimulated by literary sources like Brazilian award-winning human rights author Paulo Coelho who believes that it is possible to understand oneself through work. De Wet also relishes author Charles Nicholl’s fusion of scholarship and storytelling, avidly awaiting his update due in 2009 on Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, originally written by Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century. In fact, Italy is beckoning De Wet this year when she hopes to visit Venice and thereafter participate in Florence Biennale in December. 

Her most recent show was held at the Association for Visual Arts in November with earlier participation in a group exhibition Afrovibes in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in September. Entitled Thicker Skin the AVA exhibition consisted of a straight, horizontal row of clear square acrylic boxes, each containing an object that had been moulded, folded, pleated or crumpled into shape. Different materials like fabric, latex, gauze, bandages, rubber and paper were used in De Wet’s quest to “refer to issues such as camouflage, hiding, insecurity and sexuality”. 

Following the emotional and practical adjustments after her divorce, De Wet feels she is reaching a level of emotional fulfilment that is freeing her to embrace change without fear. Feeling more focussed on her art, she finds processing her creative responses spiritually nourishing and psychologically rewarding. As an aside, she tells me that her sign of the zodiac is Aries, saying she gets bored easily but also pointing out that ever since the age of three she kept a shoebox under her bed filled with objects; her wide-ranging interests have included natural fossils and manufactured miniature toy utensils. 

Hers is an unusual blend of Afrikaans heritage and the embrace of a modern global visual language that manifests itself in assemblage and expressionistic acrylic layered compositions hung on the walls of her home. Some of these have been sold to people like Max Wolpe and collectors overseas following a show at Joao Ferreira Gallery in Cape Town in 2004. 

De Wet has participated in numerous local and overseas shows since she studied for a national diploma in fine art at the Technikon in Pretoria and intends continuing studies through Unisa. 

Her first solo show at the Chelsea Gallery in Cape Town in 2001 was opened by renowned South African artist Judith Mason. Cape Times art critic Benita Munitz wrote of this exhibition: ”De Wet’s artworks come across as intimate reflections of intense experience – journeys into depths most of u would prefer not to plumb”. 

Informed by art history and paying homage to excellence in craft De Wet promises to delight even more as her oeuvre develops in the years ahead. Moving between mediums she creates paintings, mixed media works, three-dimensional assemblage and installations in work that has been described elsewhere as an almost voyeuristic insight into the inner character of humankind. 



LINGER LONGER, CONTEMPLATE DEEPER

Cape Times - 6 March 2001 - review BENITA MUNITZ

FACING REALITY – Paintings by Natasja de Wet

At the Chelsea Gallery Wynberg

DE WET FACES INTERNAL QUESTIONS 

Man cannot stand too much reality, it’s been said. It’s certainly not easy to confront raw unembellished truth – even in a painting. 

Or maybe particularly in a painting. For as artist or viewer we face it as we do a mirror: It reflects a lot more than our image, it reflects ourselves – our perceptions, our way of thinking, beliefs, fears, and a lot more. 

Maybe that’s why many people prefer to look at paintings that present sanitised, prettified, and idealised versions of the real world. 

No such escape in paintings by Natasja de Wet. Like it or not, she gives us the real thing – a sense of authentic experience as she attempts to “face” issues that disturb her. 

De Wet’s artworks come across as intimate reflections of intense experience – journeys into depths most of us prefer not to plumb. 

The artist’s “id” is always there with eternal questions – who am I, where am I, why am I here, what do I want, what do others want of me, who can I trust – and so on. 

How do we read all this? Through De Wet’s remarkable ability to project herself on to Perspex, glass and canvas formats through very personal and often movingly expressive means. 

The artist does not render her realities in realistic terms. In no way would this be sufficiently potent. Rather than creating illusions, De Wet expresses internal and external realities she needs to come to terms with. 

Portraiture is her chosen conduit largely because of subtle – and not so subtle – nuances of facial expression. 

Far from the flattering renderings of commissioned portrait painters, these are paintings that reach into the souls of the subjects. 

Many are wildly distorted by contrasting hues, shadows that resemble bruising, body marks that look like initiation striations, and harsh white highlights. 

Other more subtle signifiers include angled heads and indirect glances, scratching that scar surfaces, incoherent markings – and a tiny eye that peers through layers of Perspex. Such clues lead us further into pictorial depths. 

Activated, it seems, by a sense of urgency, pigment is swept, brushed and scraped on to formats in ways that seem almost automatistic. 

But while the process involves much over painting that clouds the transparency of glass and Perspex format, there is nothing spontaneous about the careful application of collage elements such as rusty metal hinges that have lost their function (become unhinged?). 

Responses and interpretation of de Wet’s art are likely to differ since paintings suggest a great deal without overt explanation. 

While psychological and symbolical aspects take you as deep as you’re inclined to go, the voluptuous application of viscous pigment holds you to the surface, creating a strong sense of physicality. 

You’ll note the way the features emerge out of shadowy depths, disorientation patterns, and debris of different kinds. 

And you may conclude that nothing can entirely obliterate the haunting experience. 

For some viewers this may be a journey to places one is reluctant to revisit. 

But while initially disturbing, these works are ultimately encouraging for they provide many life affirming clues. 

For one thing, in contrast to dark clouds that continuously threaten to overcome the protagonist, faces are illuminated by a bright strong light that seems to emanate from an outside source – that is, the real-life world beyond frame limits. 

The artist’s projection of her subjects towards the living dimension is surely a highly positive and assertive art-act. 

The longer you linger the more you’ll find to contemplate.



FACING REALITY - JUDITH MASON

At the Chelsea Gallery Wynberg

Last Sunday I was reading an interview with pop star Britney Spears in the teenybopper section of a newspaper. I quote, exactly, from the last two items “what are your hobbies?” she was asked. “I like shopping, sleeping and talking to my friends on the ‘phone’”, she replied. “What are your ambitions?” was the final question. ‘To live life to the full” she said. This monument to the comedy of the unexamined life, or at least the unexplored ironies of pop interviews reminded me, by contrast, with the work of Natasja de Wet. 

Natasja invites us to explore the examined life. She delineates for us the graffiti on the insides of our skulls and hearts. She gives us the flic-flac between portrait details- the exterior, in some ways extraneous information set against a layered palimpsest of messages at once obvious and discreet, which we read like manuscripts floating under water with interfering reflections superimposed. Paint, etched lines, Perspex and collage are used like currents behind which meaning ebbs and flows. Her technique is to sometimes suggest, sometimes explain, sometimes tease with a bit of gossip; sometimes confuse. Looking at her work is like being tuned to a number of frequencies simultaneously. These works although physically static have a sort of kinetic energy. Light picks out or blurs bits of information and sometimes our reflections are superimposed on the images as if we are eavesdroppers on the lives she explores so much as invited to share in the intimate process. They are perpetual works in progress, this whole exhibition is a work in progress, and it helps to remember that she is currently studying for a higher degree. Some of the work on display is entirely resolved; some leaves me feeling hungry for resolution. Aside from giving us many desirable single images which we can carry away as trophies she is providing us with a larger metaphor – that our lives and relationships and our place in society itself are ceaseless works in progress. That the making of artworks, or defining life’s meaning, or the practice of ubuntu are not quickly completed chores but the accumulation of layers of experience and the strata thus laid down have an irrational beauty. This work is for me a sort of archaeology of human being, seen in arbitrary cross-section. The elements are mundane – corrugated iron, screws, fragments of mirror, hinges – as are the elements which make up our own bodies – water, potassium, tranquilizers, take-aways, diesel fumes, calcium, whatever. Yet here we all are, a roomful of unique private worlds, rejoicing in the fact that we, like the work before us, are so much greater than the sum of our parts. 

We are privileged tonight to see the first solo exhibition of an important young artist. I am delighted to say that even before the exhibition opened people were queuing to buy Natasja’s very modestly priced work. They are to be congratulated, not just for being the shrewd possessors of life-enhancing objects but because they are part of the creative equation in a society which talks about renaissance without doing enough to enable new artists to live and work.

Coming from Johannesburg I have two stories to share with you. One is about the rash of Witkoppon-Tuscan and Trade Centre-Roman nonsense with which the casino industry is infesting the Highveld. Instead of allowing rising young artists to provide genuinely African renascent images we have what one commentator referred to as “renaissance with its eyes put out”. One of these kitsch-traps has copies of David, which, as a spokesman for the decorators explained with pride, have been computer corrected (or “enhanced’). The original hobbledehoy hands and feet of Michelangelo’s heroic adolescent now conform to the proportions of a mid-thirties, gym-going yuppie. This sort of thing is surreal - patronage as debauchery of great images of long ago and far away.

Then there is the story of a friend who runs a workshop for unemployed people. She told me that a young man with artistic potential showed up at her studio a couple of months ago. He had just been released from jail where he had served seven years for hijacking. She has enabled him to print linocuts which could grace any wall with their naïve charm and integrity. They sell for a mere R50.00 each. Last week he came to her and told her quite frankly that he was thinking of returning to his friends at Orange Farm and their reprehensible trade. Nobody cares about his artwork; he lives in a garage shared with four other men while his criminal comrades get the girls, the cars (naturally), the status and the excitement. The patronage of a few people could mean the difference between life and death for himself and for his potential victims.

Natasja, of course, does not need patronage at this elementary (or elemental) level, but our society needs artists of her gifts, and patrons who have the wit to recognize them, if we are to avoid the cultural chaos which threatens to engulf us.

* government and Cosimo de Medici. Natasja’s work reminds us that we possess soul and poetry and vision and that we are not just consumers of regurgitated rubbish. I am already looking forward to her next exhibition and hazard a guess that her baby, ominously present with us tonight, will appear as part of the text. To this infant I would like to say – be generous little guy. Your mommy needs her sleep and we need her skill and insight. We are so grateful for what she has given us tonight and look forward to a great deal more.