14/5/2005
Ian Waldeck
Gallery 157, Rosebank
Distruptive. The artist cuts famous painting with scalpels, crunches and folds until the violated painting becomes three-dimensional. He explains that slashing and crunching these paintings that have long captivated him is very liberating.
Disruptive
Ian Waldeck is being disruptive again. This time, in his solo show at the
Artspace, he upsets the masters of modern art by violating their paintings.
In the tradition of the anarchistic Waldeck, his current work promises to be
unsettling but revealing of our lives in South Africa.
There is a long tradition of artists paying homage to their predecessors;
from Pierneefs influence by Mondriaan, Wayne Barker using Pierneef, Van Gogh
copying Millet and Picasso reworking Poussin. Artists who throw down the
gauntlet at their predecessors often emerge from these skirmishes with
ruffled feathers, a little wiser for it, but with the experience that they
have battled the greats on their own turf.
The paintings of these masters are raw material to the restless Waldeck, who
pillages and plunders images at will. One of his works uses the famous
painting “Demoiselles d Avignon†by Pablo Picasso. Waldeck cuts it with
scalpels, crunches and folds until the violated painting becomes
three-dimensional.
Waldeck explains that slashing and crunching these paintings that have long
captivated him is very liberating. Like a surgeon, he reveals the anatomy of
the painting; its ideological entrails, political bones and social heart. He
has always felt oppressed by these despotic masters looking over his
shoulder as he is making his own art. These painters have used and abused
Africa to their own ends by colonizing the indigenous cultures. Waldeck
effects payment and retribution by exorcising their authority, another notch
in his ongoing battle with institutions and authority. A performance-piece
will be enacted during the opening.
Braam Kruger, in Business Day had this to say on the series on Picasso;â€They
are simultaneously disjointed and aesthetic, optically incestuous in their
destruction, reconstruction and disregard for the art as we admire.â€
Ian is available for shoots and interviews at his studio in Newtown.
Contact; Ian Waldeck tel/fax 011 832 2661 cell; 083 894 4850
ianwaldeck@polka.co.za
Opening: 15 may, h.5pm
Gallery 157
157 Jan Smuts Ave - Rosebank
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday: 10:00 – 16:00
Closed Sunday/Monday