BLOEMFONTEIN – The Co-Incidence of Circumstances, a solo exhibition by Wessel van Huyssteen, is open at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein until February. The exhibition features a decade of work.
Van Huyssteen is interested in concepts of place and how to engage with the representation of landscape in the age of the Leviacene − the current era, defined by the dominant, destructive power of states, corporations and artificial intelligence (AI). He is particularly interested in how power structures leave marks on the natural landscape. He works in a multitude of mediums, allowing for its materiality to steer his practice.
Currently he produces intimate and highly detailed watercolour paintings and collages, as well as abstract fields of large, densely stitched textiles. The majority of the works on exhibition consist of textiles − or “stitchings”, as he prefers to call them. The textiles used are mostly viscose, rayon and nylon; occasionally cotton. These “stitchings” are used to reflect on the textile’s toxic production processes resulting in environmental degradation.
These “cheap” textiles form the core of the “fast fashion” industry that exploits cheap labour in far-off countries for hapless social media addicts who consume its products to construct and post ever-shifting selfie identities while feeding machines whose masters are tech-bros with increasingly authoritarian ambitions, the exhibition description states.
The interconnectivity of politics, power, capital and how it shapes identity and impacts on natural eco systems function as the mood music to Van Huyssteen’s art making process.
The “stitchings” consist of fabric layers that are cut and sewn and re-sewn to excavate and construct disrupted and deliberately unpredictable geographies. In addition to materiality, work, time and craft are all essential elements to unpack his practice of craft that is impossible to duplicate by AI or robots, as the manual dexterity needed to execute the “stitchings” lies years beyond the reach of the most sophisticated of artificial minds.
Van Huyssteen has been active as an artist, arts educator, curator and film maker since 1986. He holds a Master of Arts in Fine Arts, with distinction, from Wits University. He has been nominated and won several local and international documentary film awards. The Co-incidence of Circumstances is his fifth solo exhibition. His works are in several public and private collections, amongst others the Nirox Foundation, Spier Arts Trust, Modern Art Projects and the South African National Art Bank.
Van Huyssteen lives in Rosendal, where he co-owns the Ark Contemporary gallery. The town is a charming, small farming town and arts colony in the Eastern Free State Highlands of South Africa, known for its stunning Witteberg mountain scenery, rustic charm, restored heritage buildings.
