aluminium and steel wire

Artwork date: 2004
Exhibited: Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, 'Walter Oltmann - In The Weave', 28 January to 29 March 2014.; Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, 'Walter Oltmann: Recent Works', 15 September to 23 October 2004.
Literature: Dundas, N. & Charlton, J. (eds). (2014). 'Walter Oltmann - In The Weave'. Johannesburg: The Standard Bank Gallery of South Africa, illustrated in colour on p.31.

(1)

206 x 148 x 100 cm including base

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Bonhams, London, 'Africa Now Contemporary Africa', 6 October 2016, lot 26.

Private collection, London.

Notes:

Walter Oltmann’s sculptures are skilfully woven using carefully selected stitching techniques to create a multitude of textures – taking shape gradually the artist constructs magnificent three-dimensional images. Concept and research are as intricately woven into the work as the delicate wires themselves.

In 1997 Oltmann created one of his first insect sculptures, Silverfish, for the Holdings: Refiguring the Archive exhibition at the University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School. What was fascinating to see was how the enlarged body of the fish moth created overt similarities between the human form and the insect’s thorax. He nurtured his interest in the insect’s form by creating wire constructions and suits that are hybrids between human and insect bodies. The empty suit acts as a surrogate for the body, inviting us to imagine what it would be like to find ourselves within the empty shell. The artist notes that he uses this “as a way of suggesting an in-between space – a potential zone of commonality with nonhuman animals, allowing us to imaginatively step inside to have a different view or experience of them, and also of ourselves. The empty suits can also imply bodies in transition, or as if suspended between two states, as during metamorphosis”. [1]

When creating Larva Suit II, Oltmann had thought, in particular, of Franz Kafka’s celebrated novella, The Metamorphosis (1915). In the fascinating short story Kafka wrote of a salesman, Gregor Samsa, who one day awakens to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and must subsequently struggle to adjust to his new condition.

Although the suit by Oltmann might seem hostile at first with the spikey resemblance to armour, it is rather a defensive response to a world that, much like Samsa’s world, feels unsafe and unfamiliar. Further weaving meaning into his work, Oltmann was also vocal about how this suit deals with notions of ‘self and other’, especially referring to the history of the settler colonialists arriving in South Africa. As he tries to imagine how they might have been perceived upon arrival, he attempts to invert the power relations by reflecting on the settler as the foreign ‘other’.[2]

Carina Jansen

[1] Email from Neil Dundas to Carina Jansen, 18 October 2022.

[2] Dundas, N. & Charlton, J. (ed). (2014). Walter Oltmann – In The Weave. Johannesburg: The Standard Bank Gallery of South Africa.

notes:

The companion of this sculpture and the first in the series Larva Suit I is in the permanent collection of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth.

Collections:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Seattle Art Museum, Washington; Seguros Art Centre, Bogota; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.