2nd Jun, 2019 9:00
Modern & Contemporary Art
53
Wim Botha (South Africa 1974-)
Untitled (Nebula 5 with Bywoner)
Carrara marble on a wooden base
Artwork date: 2014
Carrara marble on a wooden base
Artwork date: 2014
(1)
174 x 48 x 30.5 cm including base
Notes:
Wim Botha is an award-winning multimedia artist, and is a previous recipient of both the Standard Bank Young Artist Award and the Tollman Award. His sculptural work is particularly prized, and is exhibited internationally. His Nebula series of sculptures manifests itself over a number of years, using different materials in different iterations. Some of the Nebula figures, usually busts on customised plinths, are carved, evocatively, from the compressed pages of old copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica, once the authoritative repository of knowledge and now a signifier of outmoded thinking and dead media. Others are carved from humble pine wood or polystyrene, elevating the commonplace materials with the classical sculptural form.In this particular iteration of the series the material is white Carrara marble, the time-honoured Tuscan variety beloved of sculptors from the Classical period to the Romantics. Botha plays with the weighted historical expectations of his material in this dynamic piece, fashioning a figure caught expressively between serene realist representation and a misshapen, gouged parasitic figure, perhaps the ‘bywoner’ of the title. The fragmented, ‘exploded’ bust is reminiscent of the tortured characters in a Francis Bacon painting, a lineage that Botha also draws on for the energy it brings to his sculptural work. The dynamism of other sculptural work by Botha is clear – the earlier Prism series of bronzes (2011), for example, brings a sense of high drama to the depiction of temporality and motion. This example from the Nebula series is a work of more deliberate intent – the skill with which the recognisable human bust is finished contrasts radically with the scored and rough-hewn shapes that emerge from behind and around its head. The choice of ‘bywoner’ (the Afrikaans word for a white tenant farmer working on someone else’s farm) conjures up a parasitical relationship, dramatised by the contrasting degree of finish and refinement in the two separate but conjoined parts of the sculpture’s head.
James Sey
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 2nd Jun, 2019
Aspire Art Auctions presented a focused and insightfully compiled selection of top-quality modern and contemporary art in their latest sale in Johannesburg.
The company’s commitment to innovation led to a bold and signature move in this sale, which featured a special section dedicated to photography. The medium has been traditionally strong among South African artists but has been without a proper focus in the local auction market. The ground-breaking segment featured a wide range of the most important South African photographers, including Pieter Hugo, David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, and Zanele Muholi. In addition, the sale starred a number of the market’s big signatures – Alexis Preller J.H. Pierneef, Gerard Sekoto, and Maggie Laubser and top contemporary artists including, Diane Victor, and Wim Botha.
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