Artist Statement:
Exploring the unfamiliar is key to scientific discovery: observing the patterns and movements of nature from microscopic particles to the vast geographic planes of land, sea and ice. Our fascination with exploration beyond our planet generates new excitement of the unknown. Seeing overviews of these spaces helps us to make sense of them, mapping out our fragmented view of the physical world(s) and the various forces at play.
This series of prints, collages and handmade paper works are an exploration of imaginary landscapes and spatial planes inspired by our shifting relationship with the natural world. Engaging with ideas around construction, architecture, and notions of progress, the works attempt to create new mythical imaginings of the environment. These abstracted landscapes that are unfamiliar and somewhat dystopian, are speculative attempts at imagining new topographies. They look to humans’ constant desire to shift and change spaces for our occupancy. Images are dissected and collapsed into singular but complex platforms. The fractured imagery is a tool for deconstructing context and investigating notions of displacement and belonging. Since mapping has a history of colonialism, and of plotting “unchartered” space, this practice of construction and deconstruction attempts to reverse and re-imagine, in a sense unoccupying space.
de Wet’s practice centres around our increased sense of alienation from the natural environment and the spaces we inhabit, drawing attention to the fragmented nature of our current engagement with the world through digital interfaces. Concerns around space and how we occupy it, has lead to a fascination with boundaries, whether biological, geographical and virtual, and how these boundaries are permeable and shifting. De Wet explores the tensions between the organic and the constructed world, from surface and the subdermal networks, to the structural impact on the landscape. De Wet’s practice seeks to embrace change and create systems of order in a world that is complex and chaotic.
Biography
Bevan de Wet (b.1985) is an artist and printmaker based in Johannesburg. He graduated with a BFA with distinction from Rhodes University in 2008. From 2011-2016, de Wet worked at the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg as a professional print technician, collaborator, and academic facilitator. In 2016 he founded his own print studio called Eleven Editions, where he also collaborates with other artists and publishes various projects. De Wet regularly works with Phumani Archive Mill, a paper-making research unit at the University of Johannesburg, where he produces his handmade paper work. De Wet works primarily with paper: with a focus on etching, relief printing, papermaking, drawing and installation.
De Wet has exhibited extensively, both locally and internationally, held 6 solo exhibitions and has exhibited numerously on the Turbine Art Fair, FNB Joburg Art Fair, and the CT Art Fair. The artist’s work is held in a number of private and public collections including The Wits Art Museum, Nirox Foundation, Amazon, the South African Embassy in Washington DC, Art Bank Collection South Africa, MOAD Museum of African Design, Exxaro, and the Ahmanson Foundation in Los Angeles.
De Wet’s awards include: the Ampersand Foundation Fellowship (New York residency 2013); the Thami Mnyele Art on Paper award 2013; the ABSA L’Atelier Merit Award 2014 (Sylt Foundation residency, Germany); the ImpAct Award for Visual Art from the Arts and Culture Trust 2014; and the Cill Rialaig Artists Residency in Ireland 2017.
SubstrataI , etching, 24,5 x 30,5cm, 2021, Edition of 9
Available Framed and Unframed
SubstrataII,etching, 24,5 x 30,5cm, 2021, Edition of 9
Available Framed and Unframed
ChaosTerrain(Dark),etching with chine-collé, 40 x 32,5cm, 2021, Edition of 7, Available
Framed and Unframed
ChaosTerrain,etching with chine-collé, 40 x 32,5cm, 2021, Edition of 7, Available
Framed and Unframed
Edition of 7, Available Framed and Unframed
WaterIce(StaticDrift),etching, 38 x 43,5cm, 2021
WaterIce(Crater),photopolymer gravure, 45,5 x 35cm, 2021
Edition of 7, Available Framed and Unframed
DataSampleI(StaticNoise),etching with chine-collé, 38 x 50cm, 2021, Edition of 7, Available Framed and Unframed
DataSampleII(LostHorizon),etching with chine-collé, 38 x 50cm, 2021, Edition of 7, Available Framed and Unframed
DeadPlanet , linocut on Japanese paper, hinged to backing, 50 x 43cm, 2023, Edition of 9, Available Framed and Unframed
FormlessLandscape(TerraformI),etching with chine-collé, 34,5 x 38cm, 2021, Edition of 7
Available Framed and Unframed
FormlessLandscape(TerraformII),etching, 34,5 x 38cm, 2021, Edition of 7
Available Framed and Unframed
Fragment35,drawing ink, 13 x 17cm, 2023, 1/1
Fragment(Red),pen and ink, 14,5 x 10,5cm, 2023, 1/1
Fragment27 , etching, 17 x 13cm, 2023, 1/1
Fragment14 , relief, 13 x 17cm, 2023, 1/1
Fragment29 , etching, 17 x 13cm, 2023, 1/1
Fragment36 , drawing ink, 17 x 13cm, 2023, 1/1
