EDEN. A solo exhibition of paintings by Jaco van Schalwyk. At The Barnard Gallery, until today. DANNY SHORKEND reviews
MY IMMEDIATE perception as I entered The Barnard Gallery was that these photographs were quite eye-catching. But then I was pleasantly surprised that they are in fact paintings! Enigmatic, dreamy and thought provoking, these paintings are an exploration of nature, specifically located in Benoni, the swamps of the Everglades in Florida to Sylt Island in the North sea (where the artist was awarded a residency).
As a previous Absa L’Atelier winner and South African representative at the recent Beijing Biennale, Van Schalwyk demonstrates a keen eye and a wonderful facility with the brush.
Taken holistically, the images are marked by landscapes where the absence of the human figure is poignant. In fact, other than trees, rocks, plant-life, earth, wind, mist and water, there is but one lone bird of sorts in but one of the paintings.
The paintings are coded titles, just as some of the paintings reveal a stencilled serial number that recalls militaristic coding signals of World War II, especially significant since Sylt is an island off the coast of Germany.
So here a number of conundrums present themselves: images of the beauty of nature offset by references to war; the plenitude and power of nature with absent human figures and portals to Eden, yet with a sense of loneliness and uncertainty as to whether there is a divine presence, or if this is a lost paradise, an arcadia marred by greenish grey military camouflage, rather than a colourful surface.
In searching for answers, one notes in the work the ubiquity of a kind of pathway in quite literal terms, a feeling of immersion within the natural elements, a sense of looking in through a lens of sorts and a sky that does not reveal a foreboding doom.
It is as if the artist wants the viewer to feel the landscape, to retrace his steps through the foliage, the trees and the earth in order to “capture” a sense of kinship with the terrain. Thus the militaristic overtones, while asserting the fact that humans spoil nature, that land is something for which people go to war, at the same time nature contains a residue of original purity; nature is both historic as it “records” our incursions and seems to continue forever as it evolves, changes and grows come what may.
These apparent contradictions parallel the stylistic workmanship: From a distance, all is serene, photographic and reveal overall unity. On closer inspection, one sees the agitated mark making, the gentle nuances of grey-green, subtleties, intricacies and delicacies of white and black.
And such is nature. From afar, the earth is a spherical ball with little perturbation. As one gets closer, there is greater complexity and heterogeneity. On the outside, all is quiet, yet within (or closer), a tumult. Is there an Eden to found?
One painting is stencilled with the words in German: “Du kriegst was du gibst” – “what you give is what you get”. Perhaps this alludes to the idea that paradise is not something there waiting to be found.
Paradise is something we create by the energy expressed, by how we choose to relate and then – as a mirror and measure for measure – there may be a positive or negative response (stylistically evident as the stark monochromatic contrasts in the works).
These beautiful paintings remind us that should we want to find the elixir of life, the much famed “tree of life”, then we should seek it not so much in the image that is the tree, but rather in the metaphorical meanings that abound in nature. That is, form gives way to not form.
In this respect, one could call Van Schalwyk’s work spiritual, wherein, in a Hegelian sense sensuality reaches toward the realm of idea.
That dematerialization, as it were, is itself founded on the materiality of oil paint, human mark making and experience, canvas, a wooden frame and so on as it is processed by the perceiving consciousness.
The genre of landscape in the west is perhaps only a few centuries old and was “invented” in parallel with the increasing scientific, empirical “measuring” of nature and “enlightenment” systems of thought, promising to bring heaven down to earth.
Neither scientific nor philosophical “enlightenment” has brought about alleviation of war, the end to the abuse of land, nor a grand theory of everything.
On the other hand, Van Scalkwyk’s landscapes do seem to promise that “out there” there is yet undiscovered land, boundless beauty – not there in order for man to attach economic value nor guerrilla warfare. Just living, breathing, being… Eden comes when we are open to beingness, an expansion of consciousness, where pattern, light and shadow metaphorically allude to overcoming impeding doom with the promise of salvation.
We are enjoined merely to sense this, rather than over-intellectualise or blindly believe.
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