FINE ART: Ivor Powell
AS a child, I used to play a detective game without any=20 real rules. All you had to do was wander around in the=20 veld examining scraps of paper, .rusted tins, the=20 occasional used condom, crumpled cigarette packets,=20 leaking batteries … all of which became clues to a=20 fictional crime.
The watercolour and egg-tempera paintings made by Keith=20 Dietrich, head of the arts department at Unisa and=20 currently exhibiting at The Art Gallery in=20 Verwoerdberg, are reminiscent of these Sherlock Holmes=20 games. The paintings are more serious, of course, more=20 philosophical in their rendering of objects as clues;=20 the “crime” is of a different order. Nevertheless,=20 Dietrich works with the same sense of junk as replete=20 with mysteries and truths, of some significant=20 narrative waiting to be constructed from the detritus=20 of the urban and rural environments.
The objects, rendered with almost super-realist=20 fidelity, are isolated from each other on clinical=20 white surfaces or on rocks. In both cases, the effect=20 is the same: the objects look as though they have been=20 laid out as exhibits.
The effect is underscored by lighting, the shadows of=20 the objects being given almost as much importance as=20 the objects themselves. And a conceit — familiar, at=20 least, since Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass — is=20 generated whereby the shadow cues in the fourth- dimensional life of the represented object, as it=20 exists in time and space.=20
In the same gesture, the object is rendered as=20 mysterious and meaningful, redolent of its context, not=20 something you would kick out of your path in passing.
Even so, the arrangement is not going to “make sense”;=20 there is no code that is going to unlock the symbolism=20 of Dietrich’s arrangements. They exist in part as=20 shrines, in part as riddles, in part as those exercises=20 where you have to make connections in order to commit=20 collections of things to memory. In short, the viewer=20 is called upon, not to receive, but to construct=20
Of Vanitas and Other African Sunbeams is one of the=20 more accessible of these works. Laid out on a rock=20 surface are, among other things, an ID book open at the=20 photograph, an African curio figure, one of those=20 little snow scenes sealed inside a bell, an African=20 mask in profile, an ornately worked kierie, a razor, a=20 tin of pilchards, a smiling photograph and a=20 grasshopper. Together the items evoke, more directly=20 than in any of the other paintings, a particular type=20 of life, probably that of a migrant worker.
But the works are not always this satisfying. For=20 example, What Dr Livingstone Did Not See on His Way to=20 Lake Ngami remains more recondite. Animal horn, bits of=20 skeletons, a pack of Taganda tea, assorted shells, Ace=20 coffee, a broken stirrup: these items evoke colonial=20 penetration of the African continent, certainly, but=20 they never quite spark into that Sherlock Holmes=20
By contrast, the work of co-exhibitor Elfriede=20 Pretorius is anything but dry or academic. In a number=20 of the assemblage pieces on exhibition, she draws=20 together art historical references, fragments of=20 Western culture and knick-knacks, along with township=20 povera materials like corrugated iron and hessian and=20 sand, then overlays them all with dark, brooding,=20 industrial wasteland colours.=20
The effect — as in Dietrich’s work — is of a melting- pot of consciousness. But, in Pretorius’ works, this is=20 somewhat too literally so; she seems to be wearing her=20 internal mess on the outside, not getting to the point=20 where it becomes instructive.
Occasionally, though, the works succeed. There is a=20 series, constructed as a narrative, which begins with a=20 panel inscribed “Spiderman starts his journey. We know=20 he will not escape alive.” While the series as a whole=20 ends up somewhat mawkish, the individual panels, using=20 abstract paint techniques and textures to threaten and=20 finally destroy the mutating comic-book figure of=20 Spiderman, are both evocative and powerfully realised.=20
And there is probably a lesson here: the formal premise=20 is simple and the battleground exists on the painting=20 surface, not in the consciousness of our confusing=20
Keith Dietrich and Elfriede Pretorius exhibit at The=20 Art Gallery in Verwoerdberg until July 15