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The incarnation of the puti (2008)

Red ochre, yellow ochre, hematite, anthracite with white enamel on board

This multimedia work unravels painting processes and the dialectic I perceive in the history of painting. On the one side I see idealistically beautiful and immortalised painted images like the uncreative vampire painter Maurice describes the paintings of Sandro Botticelli in the popular novel Blood and Gold of Anne Rice; on the other hand I see erosive painted images of a primal nature (the glittering hematite and drying red oxide still applied on Tswana peoples’ faces, the “oxygenized” disintegrating images of the Lascaux caves or Coca-Cola being thrown to temporarily make a San rock painting shine and then fade in the middle of the Klein-Karoo in the seventies). My interest is in natural paint boxes, making paint and crushing pigment in the “Renaissance way”. These applications have become rather redundant or even irrelevant in contemporary painting. I have experienced a withdrawal from the past. Alienation and disembodiment took place in the spiritual relationship between painter and painting. Incarnation of the puti, evolutionises these processes and visually represent a schizophrenic painting history.

Thresholds: Puti, democratization, geo-gnostic eye