Portrette van die alledaagse misterie 

(Portraits of the mundane mystery) 

Since 2024

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.

 Sampling of previous works

2005-2023

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. 

Get in touch at hello@artshapeswillem.africa or at +27 (0)74 200 9416.