SCATTER e-Wayfinder

Fritha Langerman

Fritha Langerman trained at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (BAFA, MFA and PhD), where she is an Associate Professor specializing in printmaking. Her PhD thesis The exploded book: A disarticulation of visual knowledge systems within sites of natural history display (2013) looked at the legacy of the form and structure of the book in natural history museums and the resultant hierarchical representation of speciation This included two exhibitions at the Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town, Subtle Thresholds (2009 - 2010) and R-A-T (2012 - 2013) Her research is of an interdisciplinary nature that includes interests in curatorship; the biomedical representation of the body; and the languages of museum display and the politics of visual taxonomies in natural history museums She exhibits nationally and internationally and has many public commissioned works, including the West Coast Fossil Park, the 3rd Cape Town Public Sculpture Commission and installations in medical and science departments at the University of Cape Town Her recent exhibition, FREIGHTED: 500 years of rhinoceros collection and display, has travelled to natural history museums in Cape Town, Lisbon, Madrid, Leipzig and Brussels

EXHIBITION WALKABOUT WITH THE ARTIST

TUESDAY 16 MAY 2023 @ 13H00

Artist Statement

To insist on the scatter is to insist again on the sensual encounter with the world at hand….To call drawing a scatter is to emphasise the role of chance: to call it a constellation is to emphasise the systematic The friction between the two creates maximum mobility (Briony Fer)

This collection of drawings and prints takes the associative language of 'forest' and 'clearing' as its starting point While forests are the subject of much creative response to environmental challenges, I am influenced by Robert Pogue Harrison’s Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (University of Chicago, 1992) where he discusses the symbolic space forests occupy at the edge of settlements: at the edge of exteriority and interiority, as simultaneous places of refuge and physical denial In evoking Heidegger’s notion of the ‘clearing’ – the open space of light (lichtung) where human consciousness can emerge, Harrison writes that for the celestial religions of the world to develop, forests had to be felled so that a pathway to the heavens could be opened through the canopy. Forests of the modern world became the raw material of conquest and colony, for centuries providing wood for ships and wagons. I am interested in what this symbolic opening of ‘tree space’ means and the paradox between enabling visibility and generating devastation and subjugation

The works refer to congestion, aggregation, contamination, coagulation, and the act of clearing as forms of compositional construction Using visual devices that crowd, flatten, and deny hierarchy or dominance, they compress figure-ground relationships as a reflection on the full and felled forest and the associated tensions between them Images move between those that demonstrate horror vacui and those that rely on singular images or vacated surfaces.

The work has a wide range of reference, and draws on: settlement and distribution through human, science and visual lenses, held by and refusing the grid; the visual analogy of the dandelion head as a formal structure diffused by single breath; the horizontality of Leo Steinberg and Rosalind Krauss; Leonardo da Vinci's Cloudburst of Material Possessions (c.1506-12); Uccello’s The Hunt in the Forest (c 1465-70) and Botticelli’s Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (1483); settler trees in Constantia; histological images of brain tumours and infectious disease; multiple hands of St Francis; scatological drawings imagined as the ultimate space of interspecies entanglement; knotted limbs; gall ink, intestines, the 0-horizon, and Charles and Ray Eames' Powers of Ten (1977).

Fritha Langerman, 2023 www frithalangerman com

Main Gallery

Settler series: Oak, Groote Constantia

Linocut on fabric 2020

83 x 120 cm

Edition 4

Settler series: Oak, Witteboome

Linocut on fabric

2020

70 x 120 cm

Edition 4

Extinction-Codex

Linocut 2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

Extinction-Ark

Linocut 2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

Settler series: Cypress, Parish Cemetery

Linocut on fabric 2020

83 x 120 cm

Edition 4

O-horizon 2

Sumi ink, wax and collage 2023

60 x 60 cm

Horror vacui 2

Etching

2023

28 x 28 cm

Edition 4

O-horizon 3

Sumi ink, wax and collage 2022

60 x 60 cm

Settler series: Pine, Christ Church

Linocut on fabric 2020

20 x 120 cm

Edition 4

Extinction-Cathedral

Linocut 2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

Rustenburg Slave Memorial soil

Middle Gallery Room

Cloudburst

Lithograph 2022 24 x 24 cm Edition E.V. /I/I

Powers of Ten, Various Works

Etching 2017-2023 10 x 10 cm Edition 10

Top row (L-R): Powers of Ten:-19.756157, 149.223943 (10), Powers of Ten: 32.433217, -140.092749 (9), Powers of Ten: 18.59458, -72.31047 (8)

Middle row (L-R): Powers of Ten: 41 86511 -87 61389 (4), Powers of Ten: 43 08173, -78 95121 (6), Powers of Ten: 50 03328, 2 76253 (5), Powers of Ten: 51 38923, 30 09503 (7)

Bottom row (L-R): Powers of Ten: 60 221127, -43 480855 (3), Powers of Ten: 37 31990, 141 02493 (2), Powers of Ten: 34 39622, 132 45357 (1)

Back Gallery Room

Histology 2

Sumi ink and collage 2022 49 x 190 cm

Manifest: 500 hands of St Francis

O-horizon 1

Sumi ink, wax and collage 2023

90 x 90 cm

Scatology 1-4

Graphite 2022

34 x 41 cm

Glossary

Clearing

Heidegger’s notion of the open space of light (lichtung) where human consciousness can emerge The clearing allows humans to recognise entities other than themselves and to access the being that they may become A site cleared of the dense proximity of things that otherwise renders them invisible (Being and time, 1927).

Cloudburst

Leonardo’s little known drawing A cloudburst of material possessions (c. 1510) depicts Savonarola’s ‘Bonfire of the vanities’ in which luxury goods, deemed sinful, were burned by religious authorities in public Italian squares

Coagulation

A process of clotting and repair, particularly in blood, when liquid changes to a solid or semi-solid state.

Compost

The process that transforms biological waste into nutrient-rich soil. Decomposing and emergent Donna Haraway writes, ‘ we are all compost’

Concatenation

A group of things linked together or occurring together in a way that produces a particular result or effect The linking of things in a series

Contamination

The negative impact of one set of conditions on another To make impure Mary Douglas says that all matter has an order of classification and defines dirt as ‘matter out of place’ (Purity and danger, 1966).

Dandelions

Symbolic of regrowth, bitter suffering and strength, the pusteblume seed holds the wind dispersal record for distance

Extinction

A series of four linocuts compositionally based on Uccello’s The hunt in the forest (1470), Botticelli’s Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (1483) and Renaissance hunting tableau. They refer to the history of western scientific observation, the politics of nature study, and the construction of natural history in museum and book form

Forests

For the celestial religions of the world to develop, forests had to be felled so that a pathway to the heavens could be opened through the canopy (Robert Pogue Harrison. Forests, 1992). They occupy a symbolic space at the edge of settlements: at the edge of exteriority and interiority, as simultaneous places of refuge and physical denial Forests of the modern world became the raw material of conquest and colony, for centuries providing wood for ships and wagons.

Grids

The vertical and horizontal planes that direct what is seen and relative relationships between objects within these planes The ben-day reproductive technology dot screen

Horizontality

Rosalind Krauss describes the horizontal acts of drawing as one that denies art as a window and rather acknowledges the physicality of mark-making and human action as a rationale for creative production Leo Steinberg’s flatbed horizontal fields are those that recall tables and floors They are ‘ any receptor surface on which objects are scattered, on which data is entered, on which information may be received, printed, impressed whether coherently or in confusion’. (Other Criteria: the flatbed picture plane, 1972) Gravity, the will of ink to drip, to drag, to pool, to flow Lying on the stomach, looking at the ground. Closely.

Horror Vacui

A fear of empty spaces. The filling of the picture plane with details and massed information.

Knots

Accumulations and congestions, the clogging of space with matter. Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña says ‘In the Andes people did not write, they wove meaning into textiles and knotted cords ’ The quipu, is a knotting system, ‘ a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once’ (Tate, 2022).

Microscopy

Histology, skin transections, sweat glands, brain tumour cells, the point of light transmission between two spaces, points of contact Looking at matter; looking through matter

Manifest

To demonstrate that which is clear and obvious 500 hands of St Francis translates hands sourced from more than 100 images of the saint The cult of St Francis marks a time in Italian Renaissance art when images of Christ became more visceral, and pain, vulnerability and sacrifice became the foregrounded subject of this genre of painting Drawings of feet and hands, chicken, sheep and pigs feet from Renaissance and Baroque paintings

O-horizon

The uppermost soil layer of organic matter, the layer of decay, of humus and productive soil Robert Pogue Harrison writes that the Latin humanitas derives from humando, meaning ‘burying, burial’, and that this in turn is from humus, meaning ‘earth’ or ‘soil’ To be human is to bury (The dominion of the dead, 2003)

Powers of ten

The Eames’ 1977 video that demonstrates magnitude, moving in increments of 10 x magnification from the human body into deep space and back through the body ending inside a carbon atom proton An etching series of ten 10 x 10 cm prints starting with an image of grass taken at Lake Michigan, Chicago, the site of the Eames video Nine more etchings of environmental and human disasters have equivalent formal values to the initial grass image, but are taken at a vast proximal remove Attention is drawn to relative perspectives and magnitudes of crises

Scatology

The study of faeces The artist’s Subtle Thresholds exhibition (2009) included 16 electron microscope images of animal faeces, that became complex landscapes, visually far removed from their source. Faeces are a site of multispecies collaboration. Sculpturally anthropomorphic cow dung and an alphabetic grid of dog excrement

Scatter diagrams

A two-dimensional visualisation that demonstrates variables and relationships between data Plotted points on the Cartesian co-ordinate system Developed by John Herschel to study the orbit of double stars.

Settler trees

Linocuts of tree species introduced to South Africa over the past 480 years, and drawn from the suburb of Constantia Trees representative of a colonial history, that by their particular forms (broken, smothered, truncated), point to an ending Since their initial documentation in 2017, all four trees have either died or been felled. The role of arboreal iconography in inheritance narratives: the tree of life, tree of knowledge and family trees; 19th century Japanese tree woodblocks and their dual symbolism of transience and endurance

Price List

Powers of Ten

Etching

2017-2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

Powers of Ten: 34.39622, 132.45357 (1)

Etching

2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R 3 920 00 (framed), R 2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 37.31990, 141.02493 (2)

Etching

2018

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920.00 (framed), R2 800.00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 60.221127, -43.480855 (3)

Etching

2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 41.86511 -87.61389 (4)

Etching

2017

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 50.03328, 2.76253 (5)

Etching

2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 43.08173, -78.95121 (6)

Etching

2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 51.38923, 30.09503 (7)

Etching 2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 18.59458, -72.31047 (8)

Etching 2023

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten: 32.433217, -140.092749 (9)

Etching 2019

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Powers of Ten:-19.756157, 149.223943 (10)

Etching 2019

10 x 10 cm

Edition 10

R3 920 00 (framed), R2 800 00 (unframed)

Cloudburst

Lithograph

2022

24 x 24 cm

Edition E V /I/I

R5 600,00

Constantia, 1950

Gall ink

2023

42 x 42 cm

R11 2000 00

Extinction-Ark

Linocut 2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

R15 400 00 (fraomed), R11 900 00 (unframed)

Extinction-Cathedral

Linocut

2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

R15 400 00 (fraomed), R11 900 00 (unframed)

Extinction-Codex

Linocut 2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

R15 400 00 (fraomed), R11 900 00 (unframed)

Extinction-Eden

Linocut 2020

120 x 34 cm

Edition 5

R15 400 00 (fraomed), R11 900 00 (unframed)

Histology 1

Sumi ink and collage 2022

49 x 140 cm

R21 000 00

Histology 2

Sumi ink and collage

2022

49 x 190 cm

R21 000.00

Scatter 1

Graphite 2022

84 x 84 cm

R11 200 00

Scatter 2

Linocut 2023

Edition 5

R10 920 00 (framed), R8 400,00 (unframed)

Scatology

Gall ink drawing

2023

70 x 70 cm

R11 200.00

Scatology 1-4

Graphite 2022

34 x 41 cm

R6 160.00 each

Scatology 5

Graphite

2023

54 x 69 cm

R6 580 00

Rustenburg Slave Memorial soil

SEM image, digital print 2022

27 x 27 cm

NFS

O-horizon I

Sumi ink, wax and collage

2023

90 x 90 cm

R11 9000.00

O-horizon II

Sumi ink, wax and collage

2022

60 x 60 cm

R11 200 00

O-horizon 3

Sumi ink, wax and collage

2022

60 x 60 cm

R11 200 00

Weeds

Ink pen

2023

59 x 64,5 cm

R7 7280 00

Strata 1-4

Ink and collage

2023

26 x 46 cm

R5600 00 each

Settler series: Pine, Christ Church

Linocut on fabric

2020

20 x 120 cm

Edition 4

R16 800.00 (framed), R12 600.00 (unframed)

Settler series: Oak, Groote Constantia

Linocut on fabric

2020

83 x 120 cm

Edition 4

R16 800 00 (framed), R12 600 00 (unframed)

Settler series: Oak, Witteboome

Linocut on fabric

2020

70 x 120 cm

Edition 4

R16 800 00 (framed), R12 600 00 (unframed)

Settler series: Cypress, Parish Cemetery

Linocut on fabric

2020

83 x 120 cm

Edition 4

R16 800.00 (framed), R12 600.00 (unframed)

Knot

Gall ink 2023

40 x 58,5

R9 800 00

Manifest: 500 hands of St Francis

Monotype 2019

50 x 132 cm

R22 400.00

Manifest II

Gall ink

2023

58 x 80,5 cm

R11 900 00

Horror vacui I

Etching

2023

28 x 28 cm

Edition 4

R5 600 00 (framed), R4 4480 00 (unframed)

Horror vacui 2

Etching

2023

28 x 28 cm

Edition 4

R5 600.00 (framed), R4 4480.00 (unframed)

SCATTER

A solo show by Fritha Langerman

All images and text © Fritha Langerman

Exhibition Production: Fritha Langerman and GUS

GUS Volunteers: Chéyenne Britten, Hannah Davis, Jacqueline Dow, Lynette Geldenhuys, Tara Hall, Janie Heyns, Tara Jones, Gloria Makochieng, Rebekah Pringle, Vikisha Ranchod, Kajal Ranchhod, Helena Roussouw, Ron Sauerman, Minka Schoonwinkel, Anita Shunmugam, Bianca Süssman, and Dene van Schalkwyk

GUS Curatorial Intern: Rabia Abba Omar

GUS Custodian: Kamiela Crombie

GUS Gallery Committee: Dr Kathryn Smith, A/Prof Ernst van der Wal, Dr Karolien Perold-Bull, Carine Terreblanche, Ashley Walters, Ledelle Moe

GUS (Gallery University Stellenbosch) is managed by the Department of Visual Arts, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Stellenbosch University

GUS

Corner of Dorp and Bird Streets, Stellenbosch

gus@sun ac za

www gus-gallery co za

Instagram: @stbgus

Facebook: GUS / @galleryuniversitystellenbosch

Tues - Fri: 09h00 - 16h00

Sat: 10h00 - 14h00

Mondays by appointment