'A Thousand Things'

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 - 02 November