„Beauty is a difficult concept“ (Wim Botha)

 

 

FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph is pleased to present "Studies for Landscape with Variables", the seventh solo exhibition by the South African sculptor and Venice Biennale (2013) participant Wim Botha.

 

The new works focus on the artist's masterfully executed sculptures in dark walnut as well as his impressionistic oil paintings on raw cotton with natural pigments next to a series of ink drawings on paper. The landscape paintings form a flaming floral panorama for the full-figure statues and delicate male and female portraits placed throughout the exhibition space.

 

With their concentrated and contemplative expression, the heads inspire the viewer to look inside and stand in stark contrast to the expansive surfaces of the light canvases with the eruptive gesture of painting similar to that of a „battlefield“. Clusters of Impasto markings are reflected like wounds or relics of flora on the faces. They raise the question of how the dynamic and turbulent events of current events take place equally in time and space and have an effect on our anthropocentric world.

 

"Beauty is a difficult concept..." - This quotation by Wim Botha expresses the impulse of his artistic work in the dialogue between process, material, colour and form and is illustrated in the central work of the show, an anatomical study of a lifelike wooden figure formulated both functionally and aesthetically. It was created in homage to the French sculptor of Classicism Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) and reflects the urgent questions about the existence of man and his humanoid androids in connection with nature, the sciences and the infinity of the cosmos: How do we shape our future identity and our (human) being in the quest for revelation, knowledge and revelation?

 

Wim Botha was born in 1974 in Pretoria and lives and works in Cape Town. He graduated from the University of Pretoria in 1996 with a BA in Fine Arts. The artist became known to a wider international audience through his exhibition in the South African country pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Botha has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Standard Bank Young Artist Award 2005 and the first Tollman Award 2003.

Current solo exhibitions of the artist include Spaced Out at Gut Kerkow (Sept. 2019) and Galerie FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph Berlin (Sept. 2019). 2019) and previously the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh (2019), the Norval Foundation in Cape Town (2018/19), the Galerie Hans Meyer in Düsseldorf (2017), the Fondation Blachère in Apt, France (2016), the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon/Portugal (2014), the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (2014), the Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013) and the Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch (2013). Regular exhibitions with Wim Botha present the galleries Stevenson Gallery JoBurg/ Cape Town (since 2005) and FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph Berlin (previously Jette Rudolph, since 2009).

Among the remarkable group exhibitions with Wim Botha are "Sculptures" at the Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean (2018); "The Divine Comedy: ..." at the MMK (Museum für Moderne Kunst), Frankfurt and other venues (2014-5); Lichtspiele at the Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen (2014); Imaginary Fact: .. the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); "The Rainbow Nation", Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2012); the Göteborg Biennale, Sweden (2011); "Memories of the Future: The Olbricht Collection", La Maison Rouge, Paris (2011); the 11th Venice Biennale (2013); the "The Rainbow Nation", Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Sweden (2011); the "Biennale of the Future: The Olbricht Collection", La Maison Rouge, Paris (2011); the 11th Venice Biennale (2011). Triennial for Small Sculpture, Fellbach (2010); "Peekaboo: Aktuelles Südafrika", Tennis Palace Art Museum, Helsinki (2010); "Olvida Quien Soy - Erase me from who I am", Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2006); the Dak'Art 7, the Dakar Biennale (2006) and the travelling exhibition "Africa Remix" (2004-2007) with its stations in the museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, in the Hayward Gallery, London, in the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris and in the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.