Dylan Lewis exhibits at L'Ormarins
2007-03-22
DYLAN LEWIS, an exciting South African artist who has emerged as one of the foremost figures in sculpture today, will be exhibiting his latest collection of bronzes for the first time to the South African public at L’Ormarins in Franschhoek until 25 March.
Hosted by Everard Read Cape Town, the exhibition, Emergence, is presented in collaboration with Don Searll, an internationally recognised producer, director and video artist. Don Searll is the director of Haptics.
Don uses the art of technology and innovation to capture his audiences and powerfully communicate the message. This, a South African first, enhances Lewis’s sculpture by creating an interactive experience, taking South African art exhibitions to a new level.
Audiences will be taken on an intriguing journey, moving from one film installation to another where the sculptures appear as cinematic images exploring some of the ideas that influenced their making.
In other places, visitors will experience the heat and roar of the furnace as they watch a bronze casting filmed in 3D, or step into the artist’s studio to touch and feel the raw materials of sculpture: clay, wax, plaster and bronze. Interspersed amongst the film installations are the sculptures themselves, presented in plaster and bronze.
Having concluded the Cat collection almost two years ago Dylan Lewis has been reinventing himself and his work, sketching and studying the human form.
The new collection of breathtaking sculptures capture the timelessness of the human anatomy, while also exploring Lewis’s broader concerns of environment, wilderness and man’s increasingly fragile relationship with the earth.
It strips human anatomy down to its essence and rebuilds it again - achieving an intimacy and an empathy that can only come from vigorous investigation and creative genius.
They are at once playful yet profound; fragile yet monolithic.
Like the wilderness that inspires them, these sculptures are enigmatic animal forms merging with human anatomy evoking rich mythological and psychological clusters of meaning.
“All the artworks in this exhibition are inspired by an emergence in my consciousness of the fundamental importance of wilderness to the human spirit,” says Lewis.
“In some figures I explore the profound sense of longing, remembrance, awakening and renewal I experience during sojourns in the wilderness. In other areas I express the anguish, foreboding and loss I have felt while watching substantial tracts of wilderness disappear during my lifetime.
“Everywhere people are debating with mounting urgency and alarm as the effects of the destruction of our environment become physically and psychologically evident,” adds Lewis.
The exhibition breaks new ground by redefining the context in which sculpture is traditionally shown.
More
News
|
