How to 'carve space' with obsolete and repurposed objects?
"There are numerous, varied and sometimes conflicting aspects to my work, usually intended but definitely also spontaneously emerging." - Wim Botha
Some artists spend their careers exploring properties and limitations of a single medium: working all their creative lives exclusively in oil, bronze, or wood; while others prefer to construct a broad narrative and deliver it through an all-inclusive range of materials. Wim Botha, a young South African artist, who represented his country at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 is, certainly, the latter. Wim's grotesque busts, surrealist torsos, spatially complex light processions, and various abstracted shapes catch the uninitiated by surprise, forcefully and monumentally inserting themselves into the viewers' space: mental and physical. Once you see and engage with a Wim Botha sculpture, you can't forget the emotional impact it had on you.


Wim Botha, Bust, Encyclopedias, Wood, Stainless Steel. Image © Wim Botha, Courtesy  the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

It's an immersive process, one which takes the viewer through several stages of realization. First comes the recognition of classical Roman sculptural portraiture as the principal influence in Botha's busts and torsos. Then subtle purpose and intention of the chosen materials reveal themselves much like physical and visual elements in Antony Minghella's cinematic masterpieces. Each decision in Wim Botha's work is deeply imbued with purpose. White Carrera marble, one of the most expensive sculptural materials, is carved to reveal typically African features — symbolism most pertinent in a country whose recent history was defined by Apartheid and oppression of its black citizens. Conversely, burned and charred wood is used to portray typically European faces - another commentary on the issues of perception and inequality.

Bust of a Man Early Imperial, Julio-Claudia mid first century AD. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wim Botha, 'A Thousand Things' part 10, Detail. Treated wood and black ink. Image © Wim Botha

Busts that feature double heads, or heads attached to sculls recall Hamlet's famous conversation with Yorick's scull at the start of the play's third act.






"In my paper works, I carve subjects from stacked or compressed documents containing selected texts with content and meaning significant to the work. By carving a form from these texts, the information it conveys becomes a part of the physical substance of the work and is directly related to the form."

Wim Botha, bust, 2010 Portrait Bust (Daughter), 2010 carved Afrikaans bibles, 56 x 53 x 38 cm

In Wim's elaborate installations Afrikaans bibles are used to create images from Western culture and history, drawing attention to the invasion of one culture by another and, subsequently, inverting it. White polystyrene busts are cast in bronze, transforming weightless objects into heavy, immovable ones. And then there is the issue of the pedestal. Like Rodin, Boccioni, and Giacometti before him, Wim Botha reinterprets the purpose and perception of the classical support element, adding to its evolution.

Wim Botha, 'Prism 10 (Dead Laocoön)' 2014. Bronze, Image © Wim Botha, courtesy the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

"In my work there is seldom a distinction to be drawn between the prominence of the concept and that of the medium. I work with materials central to mass consumerist applications, that are subsequently transformed in essence and meaning to a point at which material and concept becomes integrally interdependent. The works take the form of sculptural installations. I appropriate well-known, sometimes trite and over-saturated subject matter which, coupled with traditional shaping and technological elements,