1 - 14 March 2010
iArt Gallery, 71 Loop Street
It is always with pleasure that we welcome Louis Jansen van Vuuren back to South Africa, and as refreshing as his sparkling presence is, so is this new body of work an honour to present.
The permissive motif sub rosa literally means “under the rose” and connotes secrecy and confidentiality.
These connotations stem from Greek mythology, in which a rose was given by Aphrodite to Eros, her son and the god of love. Eros in turn gave the rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, in a pact that would ensure that his mother’s indiscretions (and those of the gods in general) would remain private affairs, so to speak.
In Jansen van Vuuren’s work, the motif implies the development of ideas and their transformation into images as a process conducted in the seclusion of the artist’s own thoughts and, by extension, the artist’s working environment.
Also, the term encompasses the artist’s personal response to nature and, more specifically, certain flowers that provoke symbolic and atmospheric visual perusal.
Formally, there are marked changes in Jansen van Vuuren’s image-making process evident within Sub Rosa. While the exhibition contains certain transitional pieces that refer to imagery from previous themes, Jansen van Vuuren’s more expressive handling of paint and diminished descriptiveness of colour and form signal new directions in his work.
The inclusion in some works of diagrammatic botanical imagery sets up a tension between the painterly and expressive and the linear and controlled. In other works, such as the 19th century Abusson Tapestry Cartoon mixed media interventions, executed in collaboration with an accredited carton restorer Chantel Chirac in Aubusson, the allegory of antique versus contemporary is revived and revised through a series of figurative extensions.
Sub Rosa, while containing elements that Jansen van Vuuren’s audience has come to know and love, marks a turn in expression in which the pictorial plane is emptied, simplified and darkened and the execution and application of paint is vigorously intensified.
Unieke werke met die kalmte en rustigheid van blou tog ook die mistiek van die roos, die geheime, die diepste wese van die kunstenaar.
Die invloed van frankryk, die irisse, tapiserie, suid afrika, die lewensreis van die kunstenaar.
Die verskillende werke/tegnieke met n samevatting van al die talente en karakter van die kunstenaar.
Geluk Louis - dis so inspirasie vir elkeen en wat n verskeidenheid!!!
Groetnis