STEFAN KRYNAUW Portrait of a Painter
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE & PRICELIST The Newtown 37 Quinn Street Newtown Johannesburg
T +27 (0)72 6580 762 C +27 (0)72 3835 091 inside@rookegallery.com www.rookegallery.com
STEFAN KRYNAUW Portrait of a Painter
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE & PRICELIST The Newtown 37 Quinn Street Newtown Johannesburg
T +27 (0)72 6580 762 C +27 (0)72 3835 091 inside@rookegallery.com www.rookegallery.com
Portrait of a Painter:
P
ortraiture is a perennial tradition in the arts, and possibly the most enduring in the history of painting. The intimate conversation that a portrait has with its viewer transmits the artist’s acumen and perception in gauging his subject, and so his sense of individuality. A portrait connects the viewer to the emotional crux of what it means to be human; the character of the artist mediated through the canvas expressing the intrinsic within ourselves. The means of portraiture in culling the concept of identity from various points of entry and departure is at once a universal, biographical account of humankind and a singular, autobiographical performance on the part of the artist. A portrait is a process of becoming in itself. Portrait of a Painter is an exhibition that paints a ubiquitous picture of Stefan Krynauw, a young artist at the inception of his career, accompanied by the assurance of his patron-mentor, Roelof van Wyk, whom is also an artist, a photographer intuitively documenting the act of becoming in proximity to portraiture. It is not often that the portrait is inverted, becoming self-reflexive, allowing one to see the burgeoning artist as a developing portrait, but van Wyk attempts to do so by including Krynauw into his Young Afrikaner’s series, which documents the reclamation of the Afrikaner identity by the young Afrikaner individual and focuses on a massive shift from a state owned and sanctioned national identity during Apartheid, to a self-determined,
narrative, plural and personal identity, steeped in culture. Van Wyk’s portrait of the young painter channels Krynauw’s still raw artistic consciousness, integrating it into a greater cultural chimera. Krynauw in turn transfigures this rawness into paint and onto the canvas, where the underlying code of van Wyk’s portraits export to Krynauw’s act of becoming, concretized as abstracts. Krynuaw’s undertaking as a painter is mediated by received images dispatched to the painted canvas. Van Wyk documents Krynauw as a portrait through a type of genealogical process, knitting two seemingly divorced artistic oeuvres together. With this lattice a prospective lineage unfurls, a confluence between an unknown artist and his established mentor. The paterfamilias path that the two of them trod together establishes their relationship. The two are analogous; an analogy that subsidizes the portrait, helping it to evolve in an extended loop, a seesaw of antecedents transpiring the tradition of portraiture. Although seemingly abstract, all Krynuaw’s paintings are rendered portraits through this relationship and his own process of becoming. Krynauw was born in Somerset East in 1989. He has a background in acting, and studied drama at Stellenbosch University, where he holds a Bachelor’s Degree. In 2010 Krynauw uprooted himself, discarding his thespian past in a circuitous resolution to become a painter. With the patronage of van Wyk, Krynauw’s resolution required only twelve months to complete, making the documentation of his burgeoning
the source material onto largescale canvases, blazoning them into intensely gestural abstracts, imbuing dark hues against bold, saturated and littered brushstrokes. Krynauw’s poached images from the media populate his studio like In terms of descent and lineage Krynauw and van Wyk are jointed, debris after a natural catastrophe; paint is everywhere. This residue is caught-up in the fibers of each other’s work and heritage. Van Wyk exploited by Krynauw, taking the violence of his mediated material, has the implicit role of the classical translating it into a source of patriarch, with portraiture as the original meaning; a portrait. anchor, manifested in a Hellenistic atavism, evidenced by his portrait Krynauw’s paintings display a of Krynauw as a Young Afrikaner. Baroque-like antithetic, also palpable Within the context of Portrait of in van Wyk’s Young Afrikaner’s, a Painter, van Wyk’s photograph counterpoised by expressionist and of Krynauw is as primary as an abstract tendencies. He begins each abstract to a book. painting as a series of irresolute experiments and improvisations, Van Wyk’s Young Afrikaner’s applied directly to the canvas. series investigates the inside-out Slowly, engendered by an intuitive rootedness of a reterritorialized navigation of the black holes language; commonly known as inherent to the canvas, Krynauw’s ‘Die Taal’ (the Afrikaner dialect), marks and gestures develop into which was seen as a landscape in itself, founding a nation, practically abstract masses, plateaus, fields and forms. A portrait is composed from annexed by the Apartheid state. Van Wyk takes this foundation and various unfinished compromises that construct the bedrock of his proves how ‘Die Taal’ is finding painterly preparations. From this virulent new offshoots in postpoint, Krynauw focuses on the Apartheid South Africa, where continuous ebb of action, isolation, the paradox of ownership and restraint, and improvisation. The territory, a sense of identity and cultural commonality all coalesce to consequence of this ebb and flow for Krynauw is self-exploration form a complex and much needed and self-knowledge, with the narrative, artifacts to the linguistic act of disownment and reclamation. waste matter of the studio, and the painting itself in essence becoming residuum. Van Wyk chronicles this Krynauw’s background in acting residuum, belaboring the studio has allowed him to measure and its contents, embodied in the the importance of performance finished painting. In turn, van in painting. Portraiture and Wyk reconstitutes the photographic performance can be seen as material from ground zero into a auxiliaries in this sense. In finding prostheticized photographic series, a technique and conceiving a ultimately creating a dual-layered, personal style Krynauw bides his detachment to his facsimiled, highly collaborative body of work. mediated sources onto the canvas. Written by Shane de Lange. His approach is that of galvanizing oeuvre a pivotal act of portraiture; a performance unfolding as a body of work, thematically drifting into other bodies of work, notably van Wyk’s Young Afrikaner’s.
Portrait of Stefan Krynauw by Roelof van Wyk , 2010.
PLATES
Untitled #1 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: R9,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #2 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: R9,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #3 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: Sold.
Untitled #4 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 2400mm x 1800mm (canvas size) Price: R16,800 (excl. Vat and framing).
Untitled #5 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 2400mm x 1800mm (canvas size) Price: Sold.
Untitled #6 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 2400mm x 1800mm (canvas size) Price: R16,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #7 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 2400mm x 1800mm (canvas size) Price: R16,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #8 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: Sold.
Untitled #9 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: Sold.
Untitled #10 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: R9,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #11 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: Sold.
Untitled #12 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 1100mm x 870mm (canvas size) Price: R9,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #13 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 2400mm x 1800mm (canvas size) Price: Sold.
Untitled #14 Oil on canvas, painted 2011. 2400mm x 1800 (canvas size) Price: R16,800 (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #15 by Roelof van Wyk Source material documentation, 2011. 2100mm x 900mm (table size). Photograph size variable. Edition 1/3. Price: R1,250 each (excl. Vat and framing)*
Untitled #16 by Roelof van Wyk Source material documentation, 2011. 2100mm x 900mm (table size). Photograph size variable. Edition 1/3. Price: R1,250 each (excl. Vat and framing)*
(Installation detail) by Roelof van Wyk Source material documentation, 2011. Photograph size variable. Edition 1/3. Price: R1,250 each (excl. Vat and framing)*
(Installation detail) by Roelof van Wyk Source material documentation, 2011. Photograph size variable. Edition 1/3. Price: R1,250 each (excl. Vat and framing)*
The Newtown 37 Quinn Street Newtown Johannesburg
T +27 (0)72 6580 762 C +27 (0)72 3835 091 inside@rookegallery.com www.rookegallery.com