Theo Kleynhans - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
This body of work has grown from a seed of inspiration that presented itself to Kleynhans in the form of a bale of imported second-hand clothing during some time he spent recently in Zambia. On the streets of Zambia, it is not difficult to find such a bale, which can be bought without knowing what is inside and then re-sold on the very same streets. Owing to this accepted practice of buying blind, Kleynhans began to see these bales as a symbol of deceit – to be forced to pay for something without any kind of guarantee that what you are buying will be re-sellable at all. From the first image of the bale, and in his typical style, Kleynhans embarked on a journey of imaginative associations that ranged from the well-loved comic strip character, Tin Tin, to the story of Babel, to the activity of dropping bales of food or clothes from planes into areas fraught with famine or civil war, to the schoolboy’s punishment-avoidance tactic of crying out, “The Devil made me do it, Miss!” And so he arrived at the image of his devils, which he describes as ‘the devils of small irritations…designed to be a gentle tongue firmly in the collective cheek of devils.’
Expanding his humourous take on disaster, Kleynhans has drawn the conclusion that ‘as soon as something goes wrong anywhere there is a self-help guru ready to take charge and guide you through the seven steps to fabulosity’. Hence, the counterpart to the group of devils consists of 33 ceramic plates, inscribed with platitudes of which any self-respecting self-help manual could be proud. Kleynhans’ view is that most people, not least himself, feel quite beleaguered by the overwhelming ubiquity of ‘aspirational tweeness’ on the one hand and potential disaster on the other. And so, speaking on behalf of many, he finds himself quite literally stranded between the devil and the deep blue sea.
There are 33 plates and 11 devils on exhibition:
DEVILS (R4 000 each):
Masked Devil
Nudist Devil
Overinsured Devil
Bad Hair Devil
Diabetes Devil
Do-it-yourself Devil
Holey Devil
Tikoloshe Devil
Old Money Devil
Dangerous Love Devil
Horny Devil
PLATES (R1 900 each):
Only begin
Ex Africa semper alquid novi
Wherever you go, there you are
It’s your lucky day today
More is more
Time brings everything
As above so below
I was born under a lucky star
I feel good
Every man and every woman is a star
I am calm
I am wealthy
What we think, we become
Reality is an illusion
It’s just a point in time
You can do it
Good fortune
Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
This, too, shall pass
Well done is better than well said
Strike it rich
Be a traveller not a tourist
I am never alone
Even when you experience particle, know that it is wave
You’ve got the money
Bigger is better
Keep breathing
Truth is within ourselves
All is good
Less is more
You can’t go to heaven until you invent it
All’s well that ends well
Caput mortuum
