This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

16th May 2009

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The two exhibitions currently on display at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg are characterised by substantially different approaches to both form and medium. While the small sculptures in Edoardo Villa’s “Moving Voices” evince a preoccupation with primary colours and basic shapes, “Past/Present” – a selection from Andrew Verster’s work over the last two decades – presents the latter artist’s fascination with complex patterns and rich textures.

Villa is best known for large-scale public sculptures such as “The Knot” (situated in front of Cape Town’s Civic Centre) and “Confrontation” (installed in Johannesburg’s Sandton business district). But while the pieces in “Moving Voices” are recognisably Villa’s – distinctively moulded and painted steel cylinders, which seem as malleable as pipe cleaners or ‘scooby’ wire – they are diminutive by comparison.

A quotation from the late Alan Crump, duplicated on a central pillar in the gallery, reminds visitors that the sculptures are not maquettes (small, preliminary models for bigger works). They may have a monumental quality, according to Crump, but “monumentality is by no means a synonym for large”.

Certainly, they are produced in a simplistic style that, it is tempting to suggest, would be more impressive if the scale were grander and they were located in a city square (or public park, or private garden) rather than a gallery. Yet one also feels that these works are ‘softer’ and more intimate than the adjective “monumental” suggests.

Viewed from a certain perspective, each sculpture can be angular and geometric; from a different point of view, however, it seems more like an abstract portrait of asymmetrical human (or animal) forms. There are ‘hourglass’ figures, rings that suggest eyes and heads, even phallic and mammose shapes.

Alternatively, if these are viewed simply as inorganic objects, they seem to be animated by the same spirit identified by the creative minds at Pixar (who showed that even a desk lamp can have a personality).

While the sculptures in “Moving Voices” are recent pieces, they do evoke particular moments in twentieth-century art history: the epoch of Bauhaus, say, or the work of Keith Haring, or the Cubist-inspired Piet Mondrian (except that Villa’s experimentations with primary colours are three-dimensional and round, rather than two-dimensional and square). As a result, they may seem dated to some viewers.

Nevertheless, the exhibition does demonstrate the artist’s ability to bend hard metal to his more gentle purposes – even if, as another pillar at the gallery insists, he is involved in a constant battle to submit the substance to his will: “forge”, “hammer”, “grind”, “chip”, “bond” and various other verbs.

As a set and costume designer for stage productions, Andrew Verster has a very different relationship to the materials at his disposal. The main atrium at the gallery is dedicated to a display of some of his work in this capacity: sketches, models and recreations of costumes and sets from operas such as Aida, La Traviata, Faust and Princess Magogo.

This is, however, just one side to Verster’s oeuvre as represented in “Past/Present”. Another prominent feature is the male nude – figures caught in provocative, erotic poses in both etchings (the “Rude Boys” series) and oil paintings (“Chico”, “Rico” and “Jaco”).

In a publication that accompanies the exhibition (editor Carol Brown empaphises that it is “not meant to be a catalogue”), Clive van den Berg writes of Verster: “He led the exploration of the male body and queer sexuality. He once said that he was responsible for putting images of the penis in public space in South Africa. He is right as far as I know.”

Still, while this aspect of his work is no doubt significant, the artist himself (in a short essay in the same publication) is careful to query the notion of a “gay sensibility” or an aesthetic with a “homosexual slant”.

It is difficult to define Verster’s aesthetic in ideological, political or sociological terms. Perhaps a more useful approach is to think of geographical or cultural influences.

For instance, Verster is very much a Durban-based artist, and he has made it explicit that his interaction with the Indian community there – he taught at the University College for Indians on Salisbury Island in Durban Bay and later took up a position at the University of Durban-Westville – resulted in a strong influence on his work by the “visual tradition” of India. In the current exhibition, paintings such “Red Deity” allude to Hindu mythology, while the “Indianesque” canvases and the “Reliquary” collages reinforce a connection to the subcontinent.

Other (east) Asian influences on his work are evident in geisha figures, symbols from the Japanese katakana alphabet and Chinese griffins. There are also traces of ancient Egyptian and classical Greek iconography in the intricate patterns he creates.

This eclectic mix is used, in various works in “Past/Present”, to mark the body in vivid colours. The effect is akin to henna, tattooing or other body art, but occasionally these bodies seem to have been violated by the act of marking. There is thus something both exhilarating and disturbing about Verster’s depiction of disembodied arms and legs (particularly in “Notes on a Crucifixion”).

A highlight of the exhibition is the “Skin Markings” installation, which is comprised of wax and tissue paper panels hanging from the ceiling. These panels portray similarly marked bodies; walking between the delicate hangings, the figures seem all the more fragile, and the sharp pins inserted into the wax emphasise this vulnerability. Yet the ‘skins’ are strikingly beautiful in their colouring and design.

The exhibition is completed by some of Verster’s sketchbooks from the 1980s and 90s, as well as a handful of ink portraits dating back to the 1970s.