prayer rug, black cloth, 2304 acrylic dice and panel pin assemblage

Artwork date: 2010
Exhibited: Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 'Big Druid in His Cubicle", 10 June to 11 July 2010.

(1)

209 x 123 x 8 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Notes:

In contemporary South African art, Williem Boshoff is the barometer of conceptualism – the artist as a deeply provocative thinker. Schooled in Arte Povera – the 1960s Italian movement, now global, which finds artistic inspiration in everyday objects, which are retooled and realigned, to offer insight – Boshoff has always found inspiration in everyday objects, things we need and use, yet typically overlook. In Prayer Gamble (2010) the components include a prayer rug, black cloth, dice and a panel pin assemblage, objects seemingly discrepant and yet unanimously aligned, in order to generate a core unrest – the trepidation and anxiety which informs prayer. After all, ritual is a practice, and, as such, repeated again and again – but differently. It is this differential nature of belief, that it is housed within uncertainty, that accounts for Boshoff’s wager: that Prayer is a Gamble. After all, prayer is the invocation of some beneficent, yet inscrutable, grace.

Boshoff, however, is never merely interested in the one-liner, his art is always generative, as nurturing as it is searching. In this case, the image is both austere and curiously caricatural – is it a laugh or a grimace that informs the gash at the centre of the prayer mat? As for its overall dilapidation? What are we to make of the interplay of sanctity and ruin? Doubtless, the distressed central rectangle of cloth is organic, and, as such, a sharp counterpoint to the framing black void starred with pins and dice. Repeatedly used in his brilliant 2021/22 solo show Word Woes at the Javett At Centre in Pretoria – the exhibition was a masterclass – dice, for a conceptualist like Boshoff, is unsurprising. As the French Symbolist poet, Mallarme, provocatively noted, “a throw of the dice can never abolish hazard”.[1] This, too, may be the reasoning behind Prayer Gamble.

In Willem Boshoff’s case, and invariably so, the execution is impeccable and elegant. In Prayer Gamble the Idea and its Materiality form a synergetic combination – a conceptual machine for living inside an inescapable paradox.

Ashraf Jamal

[1] Millan, G. (1994). A throw of the dice: The life of Stephane Mallarmé. ThriftBooks: Atlanta. online.

Collections:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Javett Art Centre, Pretoria and ARTSENSE, a group that promotes art among the blind, Birmingham.