Current Review(s)
In Season Five Everyone Dies
Wilhelm Saayman at Erdmann ContemporaryThis review was first published in the Cape Times
Protest art is dead. Or at the very least one would begin to assume so, if one were to look at some of the most recent painting exhibitions in South Africa. Modernism, abstraction and vapid watery paintings, which claim to express the delicate feelings of loss and friendship, now seem to be de rigueur. The current trend is inward looking, and the subject matter is, more often than not, the medium itself and what those in the know refer to as the ‘significant form of mark making’. Then of course there is Wilhelm Saayman, who, one feels, doesn’t give two farthings for delicate sentiment and post-painterly minimalist ‘mark making’.
11 June 2013 - 29 June 2013
Listings(s)
'King for a Day'
Wilhelm Saayman at Gallery AOPWilhelm Saayman's second solo show at Gallery AOP is titled 'King for a Day', and shows new paintings and mixed media works.
In his work Saayman juxtaposes the unorthodox and the perverse, often unsettling many of our historical, cultural, and psychological assumptions. His imagery explores the intersections between naive art, graffiti and vandalism, and expresses cynicism about power, violence and futile human endeavour.
19 May 2012 - 09 June 2012
'In season Five everyone Dies'
Wilhelm Saayman at Erdmann ContemporaryIn season five the whole cast, lured by the promise of incredible riches, boarded a plane and set off for an island where a madman hid his treasure centuries ago. The aircraft crashed, and the surviving passengers ended up eating one another until only one man was left: me.
Thank God my art supplies survived the crash.I spent the next forty years painting and painting and painting. Gradually, the memory of what other people looked like faded, but I still spent every day trying to depict the human form as best I could remember it. Under the harsh tropical sun dangling fruit with their lurid, over-saturated skins seemed more human to me with the passing of each year. I felt the teeth in my mouth and painted them, likewise my nose and aging body.
As my supplies dwindled only the most unsavoury pinks, greens and oranges were left. And so my appearance and that of those whom I tried to recall was captured in a spectacularly luminous manner. I was resigned to my fate. I accepted the fact that I would die alone, there on that cursed island.
I was down to my last few tubes of paint when I was rescued one morning by a passing cruise ship and whisked back to civilization. My paintings were a source of great delight and consternation. Before long, I became a very wealthy artist, exhibiting around the world.
What surprised me most was that I had painted people so accurately for so many decades while being all alone on that sliver of land. They really did have green, pink and yellow skins and their teeth were as skew as mine in their gaping mouths. They truly were bags of air filled with self-importance, greed and nonsensical opinions. They had invented pizza, deodorant and elevator music. They had managed to destroy a planet and many of the species they once lived with. They had not the smallest inkling of what would happen next, and neither did they care.
And as I lay my head down for the very last time I wondered, why had I spent all those years painting this human race? Why had I expended all that energy, day in and day out? My breathing grew more ragged as the answer came to me: You were all alone on an island without other people. You were a human being in need of company. This room full of paintings is the only way that you were able to combat that loneliness and hold onto another time. And now your time is also past, but others will remember you through these images.
15 May 2013 - 29 June 2013
In Season Five Everyone Dies
Wilhelm Saayman at Erdmann ContemporaryIn season five the whole cast, lured by the promise of incredible riches, boarded a plane and set off for an island where a madman hid his treasure centuries ago. The aircraft crashed, and the surviving passengers ended up eating one another until only one man was left: me.
Thank God my art supplies survived the crash. I spent the next forty years painting and painting and painting. Gradually, the memory of what other people looked like faded, but I still spent every day trying to depict the human form as best I could remember it. Under the harsh tropical sun dangling fruits with their lurid, over-saturated skins seemed more human to me with the passing of each year. I felt the teeth in my mouth and painted them, likewise my nose and aging body.
As my supplies dwindled only the most unsavory pinks, greens and oranges were left. And so my appearance and that of those whom I tried to recall was captured in a spectacularly luminous manner. I was resigned to my fate. I accepted the fact that I would die alone, there on that cursed island.
I was down to my last few tubes of paint when I was rescued one morning by a passing cruise ship and whisked back to civilization. My paintings were a source of great delight and consternation. Before long, I became a very wealthy artist, exhibiting around the world. What surprised me most was that I had painted people so accurately for so many decades while being all alone on that sliver of land. They really did have green, pink and yellow skins and their teeth were as skew as mine in their gaping mouths. They truly were bags of air filled with self-importance, greed and nonsensical opinions. They had invented pizza, deodorant and elevator music. They had managed to destroy a planet and many of the species they once lived with. They had not the smallest inkling of what would happen next, and neither did they care.
And as I lay my head down for the very last time I wondered, why had I spent all those years painting this human race? Why had I expended all that energy, day in and day out?
11 June 2013 - 29 June 2013
'The Comforter'
Wilhelm Saayman at blank projects‘We have all stood on a dark beach at night and wondered about the lights flickering in the distance. If we went there, how would we be received? Would we be safe? Will things be better than what they are here?
These seven paintings are about the transients of our society: migrants, outsiders and drifters. These individuals live their lives on the fringes where they are compelled to pretend and assume identities that are not theirs. They seek out and frequent marginal spaces where they can transact and mingle. Or just find comfort in the solitude of this liminal place, where the land gives way to the sea.’
- Wilhelm Saayman, 2014
'I create work that speaks about the horror of urban existence, albeit with humour and irony. I look for magic in the mundane and I don’t shy away from questions of mortality and morality. The results are funny, violent, disturbing, surreal, playful and startling. My paintings and drawings recall sketches found in the back of teenagers’ school exercise books, film storyboards, graphic novels and the etchings of George Grosz and the Chapman Brothers. At once sensitively artful and apparently artless, these works give vent to the private thoughts that polite society compels us not to speak'.
‘In the last year I've shifted from drawing to oil painting and also started producing larger format works. This a major progression and one that I'm relishing. Painting is an incredible joy, being able to convey narratives in this manner is liberating to me.’
- The artist quoted in 'Wilhelm Saayman' by Chad Roussouw, 2011
22 July 2014 - 09 August 2014
