'Minor Acts of Violence': Jan-Henri Booyens at the NSA
by Virginia Mackenny
The three current exhibitions at the NSA are a disparate group. First one is lulled into a predictable comfort zone by Pietermaritzburg artist Scott Bredin's unchallenging, but technically skilled and painterly landscapes, with their reliance on the traditions of Grahamstown and Pietermaritzburg. Then one is forced into reflective thought by Ingrid Winterbach's engagement with the knotty issues of identity and representation utilising Louis de Vaillant 18th century engravings as a jump off point for her drawings of black female portraits. Finally Jan-Henri Booyens' installation 'Minor Acts of Violence', is a little like a modest time-release minefield.
The latest addition to the successful ongoing programme for the Young Artist's Project (YAP), 'Minor Acts of Violence' engages multimedia in a lo-tech manner. The darkened room is full of wires and cables strewn across the floor and dangling from the ceiling. It contains four monitors, three raised just off floor level by small platforms on wheels and one on the far wall. A bare light bulb resting on the concrete floor flickers between being on and off. The room is filled with a low, ominous bass sound that grows in intensity.
The monitors depict singular, repetitive images. The first utilises a split screen, mirrored image of the incoming sea at daybreak that is difficult to read and resembles the agitation of an electronic sound pattern. The second contains a flashing black and white geometric form, while the third has an extreme close-up of the artist's eye. On the remaining screen, across the room, some respite to the overload of visual activity is offered by the image of a young woman's head that seems to be completely static. However, slowed down beyond our eyes' ability to perceive movement, this apparent refuge is undermined by a growing red welt that slowly starts to appear on the woman's neck, its cause and origin unknown.
Booyens's installation is meant to disturb at both an overt and subliminal level, and in this he succeeds. Stating his concerns as dealing with "organised chaos" he creates frictions that rub up against our tolerance levels. As well as the stroboscopic visual pulse, that necessitates a notice cautioning epileptics to be careful, his sound installation also contains subsonic frequencies that the human ear cannot pick up, but the body can still register. The sound resonates in one's chest distorting speech if one should so happen to attempt to engage in it. One's sense of tension increases the longer one stays in the room.
'Minor Acts of Violence' perpetuates stress in a highly effective way mirroring the unnoticed levels of violence we deal with on a daily basis. Such stress is not just imposed on the viewer alone, however. The sense of entrapment is most evident in the disembodied eye of the artist, looking out and being looked at, it is pinioned inside the television monitor, squirming like some fish inside its confining bowl.
Opens: May 21
Closes: June 8
NSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood
Tel: 031 202 3686
Fax: 031 202 3744
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za
Hours: Tues - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 3pm
