The Heart of the Matter
The Heart of the Matter, an exhibition by Ricky Burnett, Anton Karstel, and Iaan Waldeck.
05.06.2019- 19.07.2019
The Heart of the Matter nudges and provokes the viewer to consider these themes through the artists’ distinctive approach to materials.
Anton Karstel, Die Lyke van Twee Mans, Oil on canvas, 1995, 72.5 x 80cm
Anton Karstel, Die Verlate Plaashuis Waar Mnr. Johannes Prinsloo Gemartel en Wreed Vermoor Is, Oil on canvas, 1995, 25 x 32cm
Anton Karstel, Limpet Mine, Oil on canvas, 2017, 35 x 25cm
Anton Karstel, Mnr. Sarel Fourie, Swaar Gewond en Bewusteloos op die Grond, Oil on canvas, 1995, 33 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 1, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 2, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 3, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 4, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 5, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 6, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 7, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 8, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 9, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 10, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 11, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 12, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 13, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 14, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 15, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 16, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 17, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 18, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 19, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 20, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 21, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 22, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 23, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 24, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 25, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 26, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 27, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 28, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 29, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 30, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 31, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 32, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 33, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 34, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Self-burial 35, Giclée photographic prints, 1995, 28 x 41cm
Anton Karstel, Wrecked, Oil on canvas, 1995, 25 x 33.5cm
Iaan Waldeck, Ecce Homo, Mixed media, 2019, 150 x 200 x 75cm
Iaan Waldeck, Ecce Homo, Mixed media, 2019, 150 x 200 x 75cm
Iaan Waldeck, Ecce Homo, Mixed media, 2019, 150 x 200 x75cm
Iaan Waldeck, Kitchen 1 nr 131, Mixed media, 2005, 80 x 110cm
Iaan Waldeck, Landing 4.nr 133, Mixed media, 2005, 80 x 110cm
Iaan Waldeck, Passage 1 nr 137, Mixed media, 2005, 80 x 110cm
Ricky Burnett, Asylum Miscellany 4, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 1, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 2, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 3, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 4, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 11, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 12, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 14, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 15, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 17, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 18, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disasters of War 20, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, Disparates 6, Oil on canvas, 2015, 24.5 x 35cm
Ricky Burnett, House of the Deaf Man I, Oil on canvas, 2015, 150 x 85 cm
Ricky Burnett, House of the Deaf Man IV, Oil on canvas, 2015, 150 x 85cm
Anton Karstel, Magoo’s Bar Car Bomb, Oil on canvas, 2017, 28 x 35
The Heart of the Matter, an exhibition by Ricky Burnett, Anton Karstel, and Iaan Waldeck.
The exhibition, curated by the artists themselves, was born from a shared interest in the themes of memory, temporality, the relationship between image and reality, immateriality and materiality, and the role of the sacred. The Heart of the Matter nudges and provokes the viewer to consider these themes through the artists’ distinctive approach to materials.
A selection of works from Ricky Burnett’s much lauded Troubled with Goya series places his work in poetic discourse with the work of Francisco Goya, executed in impasto so rich it almost activates a transition into the realm of sculpture. They are at once a shadowed passion and a seductive sensuality, with a carefully and nuanced insight into the subtler aspects of painting, the inherent content of physicality and the lexicon of expression. A thought-provoking observance of the tension between presence and absence. As Keats once said, “Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter”.
In 1995 Anton Karstel buried a cement cast of himself in front of the Pretoria Art Museum. Twenty-four years later the cement double lies unaltered, fixed in time, while the artist’s body has been in motion, a passage en route to an inert state which will match the calcified matter in the cement. The pathos of this work is belied by Karstel’s gallows humour, which irreverently mocks the sacrosanct human sentiment about existence and oblivion. Karstel shows thirty-five black and white photographs of his self-burial, documented by Abrie Fourie.
The funereal content in Self-burial is echoed in Karstel’s paintings. On show are paintings from 1995 and 2017 which delve into South Africa’s violent history. A collection of photographic documents, transcribed into oil on canvas, doubles of the source material. The art/reality dyads involve a third element, the viewer, who’s forced to reconcile the seduction of oil paint with the repulsion which the subjects provoke.
Iaan Waldeck’s sculpture Ecce Homo is both a reduction and a composite summation of the human body and how one experiences being human. The sculpture, consisting of the exact elements and compounds of an 80kg man, raises complex questions about our existence. It begs the question; How and what are we, that we are made of this?
Included are works from Waldeck’s much publicized series A Casa dos Carvalhos; 10 Years of Democracy. The subject being the attack and murder of an elderly couple in their Johannesburg home, and the ensuing vandalism of their property over many years. Waldeck compounds the traumatic experience in tensely inter-meshed layers of object mementos and image traces, pointing at the violations and suffering that we often endure in South Africa.