Wim Botha

Current Review(s)

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira at STEVENSON in Cape Town

'Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors.'

Entering Wim Botha’s fourth solo exhibition, the immortal phrase adorning the doors to Plato’s Academy seems appropriate. Indeed whilst the conjunctive nature of the title (‘Joburg Altarpiece & Amazing Things from Other Places’) seemingly implies that the show is composed of two separate bodies of work (enforced by their visual disparity), the intrinsic presence of Platonic visual motif finds itself functioning as a homogenising agent to Botha’s latest assortment of befuddlement and iconographic subversion.

06 August 2009 - 26 September 2009

Romantic or Empirical Perspectives

Wim Botha at STEVENSON in Cape Town

I wanted to start this review with a chord by Beethoven, with maybe the sound of a storm and the clashing of tectonic plates. Because how else do you introduce a show so bathed with the sublime? This plain introduction will serve just as well though, because Wim Botha’s ‘Linear Perspectives’ seems to have something anti-climatic to it too. Not in any formal way, because without a doubt, Wim Botha is one of the most accomplished sculptors I can think of. His use of material in this show, the play between heavy and light, traditional and profane, is subtle and handled with finesse. His few mistakes (an art schoolish ink blob, some clunky painting) are a result of his experimentation, and are a sign that he is pushing himself as an artist, rather than resting on formulas.

Saying that ‘Linear Perspectives’ is a little anti-climatic is a little too harsh, for there is a conceptual ambiguity which is intriguing. Botha’s work is suffused with significance – the interrupted form, the broken line, the juxtaposition, the art references – and yet I struggle at times to follow what meaning underpins these signifiers, or if they merely use the rhetoric of significance to some other purpose. In this sense, Botha’s work is less Beethoven and more in the line of Wagner’s Tristan Chord: atonal, tense and discordant without any resolution.

26 February 2014 - 05 April 2014

Student Review: Linear Perspectives

Wim Botha at STEVENSON in Cape Town

'Linear Perspectives' by Wim Botha at Stevenson, Cape Town is the artist's sixth solo exhibition at the gallery. The show consists of three separate installations which are bound together to form a cohesive whole with a thread of playful juxtapositions running throughout. The juxtapositions Botha explores are the binaries of linear/non-linear and traditional/non-traditional. These are emphasized through the atypical materials used by Botha, in particular the ephemeral materials including corrugated cardboard and polystyrene. The use of these ephemeral materials also questions the notions of value, and the stereotypes within the art world of what should and should not be seen within the gallery space. This same ideai is apparent in the inclusion of certain elements which are usually hidden: exposed electrical wiring, wires from which the work hangs, and untreated wooden frames and plinths displaying the works. 

26 February 2014 - 05 April 2014

Listings(s)

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira at STEVENSON in Cape Town

Botha will exhibit a new monumental print work, along with an installation of his signature mixed media sculptural pieces. Young artist, Simon Gush, holds his first major solo show, comprising video, text pieces, sculptural installations and interventions. Zineb Sedira meanwhile, shows Middlesea, as part of Stevenson’s ongoing FOREX exhibition series.

06 August 2009 - 26 September 2009

'Work in Progress' and 'Animal Farm'

Wim Botha and Daniel Naudé at STEVENSON in Cape Town

Wim Botha: 'Work in Progress'

Wim Botha presents two large-scale sculptural installations in his fifth exhibition at the gallery. The first installation, carved from polystyrene and incorporating clusters of fluorescent tubes, is an epic figurative group in the tradition of scenes of battle and conflict, as depicted in paintings and sculpture through the ages. Though the subject matter is violent, the brightness and lightness of the materials bring an almost otherworldly atmosphere to the installation, imbuing it with a dream-like quality. The second group, by contrast, is dark, dense and heavy, consisting of composite figurative sculptures carved from encyclopaedias and wood, in a continuing evolution of the paper busts for which Botha is known.

Daniel Naudé: 'Animal Farm'

Daniel Naudé's series of photographs focusses on the relationship between human beings and domesticated animals, and the way in which the histories of people, animals and the landscape have become entwined and indivisible over centuries. Begun during a road trip from Cape Town to Mozambique in 2008 Naudé subsequently spent extended periods in rural South Africa exploring local stories and cultural myths including the Xhosa legend of Nongqawuse. Naudé's images locate the animal centrally in both idea and format, challenging our gaze and reminding us of our uneasy dominion over them.

20 January 2011 - 26 February 2011

'Alptraum'

Ed Young, Ian Grose, Wim Botha, Ruth Sacks, Linda Stupart, Zander Blom and Various Artists at Deutscher Kunstlerbund

Like George Orwell with his 'Room 101' in his predictive tale 1984, we all have our own version of what constitutes a nightmare, and for this reason, the project has been opened to a large number of artists whose many and varied personal nightmare versions, or visions, act to reflect this hugely variable human state of fears and fobias, pain and panic. 'Alptraum', the German for 'nightmare', is an artist-led project. It is a model which utilizes global communication between localized artist hubs and clusters to form an international grouping with the intent of opening a dialogue about this subject across borders and cultures in order to delve into the stuff and mind-murk that is collectively shared or completely random and unrelated, or individual and specific within the syndrome of 'The Nightmare'. Each artist draws on their own personal experience in order to visualize those anxieties, which take them beyond everyday dreams.

Working within the remit of the ‘artist-curated project’, all of the works in 'Alptraum' have been restricted in size and material in order to facilitate the low-cost postal transportation of the show from country to country. With each exhibition site taking responsibility to pass the show on to the next host, the number of works and artists may change or grow, and the approach to interpreting and hanging the show vary from space to space as the body of works meanders on from country to country. Having started in Washington DC and transferred to London, the exhibition is currently showing in Berlin. It will travel to Los Angeles next, followed by its arrival at blank projects in Cape Town. The Berlin iteration extends the exhibition to include the work of 19 South African artists, such as Sanell Aggenbach, Zander Blom, Ian Grose, Ruth Sacks, Linda Stupart, Wim Botha and Ed Young.

11 March 2011 - 15 April 2011

'Peekaboo'

Wim Botha, Jane Alexander, Anton Kannemeyer, Hasan and Husain Essop, Penny Siopis, Daniel Naude, Lawrence Lemaoana and Nandipha Mntambo at Helsinki Art Museum (Tennis Palace)

South Africa has in the past fifteen years developed into a major centre of contemporary art, with several artists in the international limelight. 'Peekaboo' is Finland’s first major review of the artists and themes in contemporary South African art.

The key theme shared by the featured artists is society in a constant state of flux. Apartheid was abolished in 1994, but its scars are still visible. In addition to historical traumas, the artists are concerned with present insecurity, the changed role of religion and the possibilities offered by new kinds of identities. Some works explore personal experiences and others comment brutally or poetically on the surrounding reality, sometimes using humour or satire. The history of European art and modern life in South Africa converge in unexpected ways.

'Peekaboo' is produced and curated by the Helsinki Art Museum, and includes twenty South African artists. In addition to the artists, the South African partners in this venture are the Goodman Gallery, the Michael Stevenson Gallery and the Brodie/Stevenson Gallery.

 

20 August 2010 - 16 January 2011

'The Rainbow Nation'

Wim Botha, Jane Alexander, Mary Sibande, Paul Edmunds, Willie Bester, Nandipha Mntambo and Nicholas Hlobo at Various venues around The Hague

This year, the Hague Sculpture Festival focuses on South Africa, with more than 50 sculptures by major artists of the past 60 years from 29 May to 9 September on the Lange Voorhout and from 8 June to 30 September in Museum Beelden aan Zee. The artists at the exhibition range across three generations. The first generation is represented by artists including Edoardo Villa, Sidney Kumalo and Noria Mabasa. Andries Botha, Willie Bester, Jane Alexander and Angus Taylor are among the second generation artists. Works by artists such as Wim Botha, Paul Edmunds, Nicolas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo and Claudette Schreuders represent the third and youngest generation. Nelson Mandela International Day will be celebrated in The Hague on Wednesday, July 18 with the unveiling of the Nelson Mandela monument by Dutch sculptor Arie Schippers.

29 May 2012 - 30 September 2012

'Imaginary Fact: Contemporary South African Art and the Archive'

Sue Williamson, Wim Botha, Athi Patra Ruga, David Koloane, Donna Kukama, James Webb, Penny Siopis, Andrew Putter, Joanne Bloch and Others at Venice, Italy

Art influences and reflects its world around us and, as the world changes, so too does its forms. In South Africa, during its turbulent twentieth century, visual art focused on political resistance and became a vehicle for insurgency against human rights abuses. After the advent of democracy it shifted towards an exploration of issues of identity, with race and gender gaining prominence. Today, contemporary South Africa is witness to a further significant movement – a renewed and invigorating focus on how and why histories continue to impact on the world today. To do this, contemporary artists are turning to the archive as the repository of these histories. This essay outlines the concept behind 'Imaginary Fact: Contemporary South African Art and the Archive', an exhibition that draws on South Africa’s key practitioners who, in very different and vibrant ways, draw on the archived record in order to make sense of our worlds today.

What is it about the record that artists find so enticing? At the simplest level, it is the rare combination of memory with ‘thing’ – a coming together of the tangible and the intangible – which makes the record such a powerful force. It allows the artist to construct new bridges between history and the contemporary, thus to create an architecture of meaning. The agency of archives has been demonstrated by their ability to both construct and destroy ideologies. Working with archives, in a creative way, therefore allows the artist to create work with the potential to change the course of our contemporary world.

A literary example from Italo Calvino (1998) complicates this question when he writes: ‘Perhaps the mistake lies in establishing that at the beginning I and a telephone are in a finite space such as my house would be, whereas what l must communicate is my situation with regard to numerous telephones that ring; these telephones are perhaps not calling me, have no relation to me, but the mere fact that I can be called to a telephone suffices to make it possible or at least conceivable that I may be called by all telephones.’

Calvino’s text is taken from In a network of lines that enlace, a chapter in his book titled 'If on a winter’s night a traveller'. These titles – hinting at the relation of one concept to another – seem to set the stage for a continuous tale. But each chapter is discrete – different in character and narrative to the one before and the one following. It is only when the characters in different chapters start demonstrating commonalities, or when the effect of relationships between characters in different stories can be seen, that the interplay between chapters becomes legible. A dynamic crossing is established between all players in a complex game of interrelationships.

In all case studies, artists appear to function partly as facilitator to release the potential energy stored within the seemingly latent records, and partly as activist in allowing the agency to do its work within societies. The most common methods used are translation (into new and evolving languages), interpretation (into new and evolving meanings), and mediation (from one medium to another), sometimes used individually, sometimes in combination, but often to startling effect.

Brenton Maart

01 June 2013 - 24 November 2013

'Linear Perspectives'

Wim Botha at STEVENSON in Cape Town

For his upcoming solo exhibition at STEVENSON, Wim Botha will create three installations, each occupying an entire room. The show will be characterised by the complex interplay of traditional materials, such as marble, bronze, wood and oil paint, and ephemeral materials such as cardboard and polystyrene which allow him to continue a recent turn in his work towards spontaneity, improvisation and coincidence.

In the first gallery, Botha will present a large-scale bronze inspired by the Greek sculpture 'Laocoön and His Sons', excavated in 1506 and now on display in the Vatican. In 2003 Botha visited the Vatican Museums where he photographed and measured the dimensions of this iconic work with the intention of realising a sculpture inspired by it. He finally found his approach to the work with his discovery of polystyrene as a medium for fluid, expressive carving, allowing him to loosely translate the figures of the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons being attacked by sea serpents into abstracted and gestural forms. These forms have been cast in bronze; a second cast is included in the exhibition 'The Divine Comedy', curated by Simon Njami, which opens at the MMK (Museum für Moderne Kunst) Frankfurt in late March 2014.

 

In the next gallery, the artist will create a hermetic world in which blackened, roughly carved wooden heads and busts carved in white Carrara marble form the portals for the installation. Further elements include a large pair of black bronze wings and one of Botha's angular infinity forms which he terms 'gravity machines', surrounded by paintings of clouds on the walls. In the third gallery Botha surprises us with an installation of dramatic wing-like figures made from corrugated cardboard. The three galleries will be linked by a single black wooden line suggesting the outline of walls and doors and conveying the construct of space. Epic in scale and composition, Botha's environments owe their powerful presence to a tension between the lightness of his sculptural forms and the weight of art history.

26 February 2014 - 05 April 2014

Exhibition

Wim Botha at Grahamstown Gallery

Wim Botha’s artwork – commissioned for the 2014 National Arts Festival – is a room-sized installation within which viewers become immersed. Composed of a multitude of sculptural and architectural elements, the work demonstrates Botha’s fascination with traditional materials including marble, bronze, wood, paper and paint, and also those of a more ephemeral nature such as cardboard, polystyrene and fluorescent lights. These materials are classical on the one hand and contemporary on the other, and these surprising juxtapositions create lines of communication from the dogmatic towards the artist’s recent exploration of spontaneity, improvisation and coincidence.

The installation’s central component is 'Study for the Epic Mundane' (2013), commissioned for
'Imaginary Fact: Contemporary South African Art and the Archive', the South African Pavilion at the
2013 Biennale di Venezia. Constructed of books bolted together and sculpted into two figures that may be either warring or loving, dancing or fighting (and any of their permutations), this composition
provides a central hub around which existing and hitherto unseen works come together in an environment that applies Botha’s technical mastery and conceptual elegance to create an experience that suspends disbelief.

The exhibition is curated by Brenton Maart, and is accompanied by a catalogue that demonstrates the development of Wim Botha’s interest in immersive, room-sized installations.

Presented by the National Arts Festival in association with Stevenson Gallery

 

03 July 2014 - 13 July 2014

'Pandemonium - Art in a Time of Creativity Fever': The Goteborg International Biennial

Wim Botha at Goteborgs Konsthall

In John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost (1671), Pandemonium is the castle built by Lucifer and his band after they had been booted out of heaven. It is the base camp from which they plot against the ‘old order’. But it is also a platform from which they seek to launch the project of another creation, a new kind of world albeit a ‘devilish’ one.  Through ‘Pandemonium’, Milton reflects on the turbulence and topsy-turvy of civil war England. Was this only chaos and hurly burly? Or was it also the birth of the modern world, of modern values and experience? It ushered in Atlantic and European modernity and Enlightenment— and the promise of a variety of paradises and utopias to come.

The term, therefore, has both positive and negative connotations. From William Blake to Derek Jarman, from punk to pop bands and everyday ‘hubbub’ of street sound and speech, it has been used to explore chaos and disorder that is at the same time about the emergence of new worlds, alternative global modernities, other possibilities. The Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art is an occasion for artists, thinkers and writers to mull over the turbulence and turmoil that is today’s world. Is it only about a sense of hurly-burly, disorder and dismal confusion — of ‘sheer pandemonium’? Or is it also about transformation and creative emergence — the making of new worlds, possibilities and paradigms?

The Biennial takes place at several venues around Göteborg: Wim Botha will be exhibiting at Göteborgs Konsthall.

10 September 2011 - 13 November 2011

'Artists Engaged? Maybe'

Wim Botha, Athi Patra Ruga, Paul Edmunds, Simon Gush, Conrad Bothes and Others at Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian

'Artists Engaged? Maybe' brings together artists from Europe, Africa and South America whose work is engaged with politics, with beauty, with art, with language(s), or with the communities in which they live or work. The exhibition features a variety of works in diverse formats: photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, film and video, and installation. Says curator António Pinto Ribeiro, 'In this exhibition we have sought to avoid the idea of a hegemonic theme justifying the impositions of a curator… It is an exhibition of fragments, doubts and images in transition or mutation'.

Artists include Athi-Patra Ruga, Berna Reale, Bouchra Khalili, Bruno Boudjelal, Celestino Mondlane, Conrad Botes, Demián Flores, Eduardo Basualdo, Eva Grubinger, Fredy Alzate, Johanna Calle, João Ferro Martins, Luiz Zerbini, Miguel Jara, Paul Edmunds, Pedro Barateiro, Raul Mourão, Sandra Monterroso, Simon Gush, Solon Ribeiro, Wim Botha.

21 June 2014 - 07 September 2014

'A Thousand Things'

Wim Botha at STEVENSON in Johannesburg

Stevenson presents a solo exhibition by Wim Botha. The show features two large-scale sculptural installations as well as a group of works on paper.

In the first installation, Botha fragments traditional baroque sculptural planes to convey a complexity of forms, creating three-dimensional sketches of light and lightness in space. A cacophony of wings, carved from polystyrene, and a serpentine arrangement of fluorescent tubes present a chaotic struggle. In what could be a contemporary retelling of the archetypal life-and-death struggle of the eagle and the serpent, the dualistic conflict of heaven and earth is played out. Metaphorically, the serpent is bound to the earth and the eagle is released from that bondage. When the two come together in heated conflict, there is a metamorphosis, and a magnificent, chaos-infused dragon, a hybrid serpent with wings, is born, a symbol of division, disintegration, strength and transformation.

In the second installation Botha returns to the creation of a 'room within a room', an allegorical space within the abstracted volume of a gallery, a theme which he has continuously explored since his 2003 installation commune: onomatopoeia. The construct of defined space will be conveyed by a single black wooden strip that will snake geometrically through the space, suggesting the outline of walls, doors and furniture. This notional space is inhabited by an assortment of figurative fragments, suggestive of both human and animal forms. Our impulse to construct specific meaning for this installation is ultimately undermined by the artist's working process which embraces the possibility of multiple contradictory arguments. After Botha conceived the conceptual environment as defined by the black lines, the figurative forms have gradually evolved in his studio, without an overarching narrative or singular objective, leaving the space metaphorically open for us to see something that is at once intensely personal and indeterminate.

27 September 2012 - 02 November 2012