| Many of Wim Botha’s works—including architectural and sculptural pieces, etchings, large lino-prints and drawings—are configured into installations that simultaneously recall and disrupt traditional conceptions of domestic and public spaces and hierarchies of power.Experiencing life feels like inhaling fresh air. It’s not like you take a book, read a chapter, and you’ve gained this or that. |  |
Michael Stevenson
Many of Wim Botha’s works—including architectural and sculptural pieces, etchings, large lino-prints and drawings—are configured into installations that simultaneously recall and disrupt traditional conceptions of domestic and public spaces and hierarchies of power. He sees his current work as forming part of an ongoing project, provisionally and ironically titled Self-portrait as a Masterpiece. The works manifest as variations on traditional portraiture, anatomical studies, and decorative sculpture, which together stand in contrast to the idea of a portrait—or masterpiece—as a singular, self-contained entity. Some of the fragments take the form of reliquaries, or at least suggest as much by being distorted and shaped according to base geometric principles. These are presented as opposing entities in an undefined conflict, partly informed by Botha’s upbringing in South Africa.
Other objects retain aspects of traditional portraiture, using plaster and wax as materials in order to associate with the traditional practice of studies or preparatory work. For the portrait studies carved in paper—such as the detail from the installation Vanitas Toilette—Botha uses Bibles written in various South African languages or English-Afrikaans dictionaries, bound together with steel rods and suspended on steel cables. These busts superficially resemble carved stone yet their materiality ensures that they are fragmented and fragile, recalling the archetypal portrait bust with its associations of narcissism and power. Yet Botha playfully subverts the form—in this instance, into the head of a proto human—and the content, with the text of the carved books adding nuance and broader context. While the works deliberately stop short of providing important answers, they reveal in the process of formulating questions. The result is a constellation of vaguely familiar signs orbiting a shifting core.
Botha won South Africa’s Standard Bank Young Artist award in 2005. His work has featured on a number of international exhibitions in the past years, including Africa Remix (2004-2007). He has an upcoming solo show at Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, in September 2009, and in 2010 he will participate in the 11th Triennale für Kleinplastik (triennial of small-scale sculpture) in Fellbach, Germany, followed by a solo show at Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin.
