Mundane things are mysterious. The humans, animals, plants, objects, actions, thoughts and situations one encounters on a daily basis presents a poignant conundrum. Something odd happens when you stop and observe them attentively. It really feels as if these things both fall apart and come into being simultaneously, that their building blocks perpetually converge and diverge. It is therefore dynamic, like a beating heart which continuously alternates between contraction and rest. Viewed from a mystical standpoint, the indescribable nature of the quotidian could be approached as a type of living being – perhaps a mythical being. Hence the name of the works in progress: Portrette van die Alledaagse Misterie/Portraits of the Mundane Mystery (since 2024). Yet it is only a symbolic representation, since the numenous cannot really be comprehended by words or images. In a sense art and literature can only say what it is not. The mystery of the mundane cannot be understood. It can only be experienced directly. As such, we could say that the artist fails to express the mystery but hopefully manages to reach another goal – that of bringing the viewer to the threshold of that total beholding.
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
Portret van die alledaagse misterie: om ’n beeld uit hout te kerf totdat die son water trek, 2024 (Portrait of the mundane mystery: carving a wooden sculpture until sunset)
Coffee, acrylic & coloured pencil on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A2 unframed)
Dedicated to the memory of Jackson Hlungwani
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
Portret van die alledaagse misterie: om ’n fout in jou moedertaal te maak en dan jouself te korrigeer, 2024 (Portrait of the mundane mystery: making a mistake in one’s mother tongue and then correcting yourself)
Coffee, acrylic & coloured pencil on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A2 unframed)
Dedicated to Afrikaans and all African languages.
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
Portret van die alledaagse misterie: om al die kinders van jou historiese self te probeer sien, 2024 (Portrait of the mundane mystery: attempting to see all the children of one’s historical self)
Coffee, acrylic & coloured pencil on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A2 unframed)
Dedicated to the current moment.
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
Portret van die alledaagse misterie: om mekaar weer te sien, 2024 (Portrait of the mundane mystery: seeing each other again)
Coffee, acrylic & coloured pencil on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A2 unframed)
Dedicated to 2025.
Sampling of previous works
On some level, I had lots of fun with these. For many years they were cartoon-like with writing. The messages tended to be either absurd or poetic, oftentimes disconnected from the images themselves, the latter portraying a melding of simple nude figures and shapes. I was experimenting with a mixture of childlike Jugendstil and what I termed "Soft-serve Surrealism" back then. For a long time my work also showed much bare paper with only a smaller patch of acrylic (or much later, of coloured pencil). Eventually the focus shifted to pure shapes, roughly in the 2010's. Finally acrylic and coloured pencil filled the paper by the 2020's.
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
Untitled, 2020
Acrylic & coloured pencil on 300 gsm multimedia paper (between A3 and A2 unframed)
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
Untitled, 2020
Coloured pencil on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A2 unframed)
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
jy plant blomme in my hart, 2015 (you plant flowers in my heart)
Ink and acrylic on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A3 unframed)
Willem Hendrik Oosthuizen (b. 1977)
"almost not/ the milk/ perfectly spilled/ while thanking dalí/ so profusely/ on the phone" (2008)
Ink and acrylic on 300 gsm multimedia paper (A2 unframed)