Notes

Wim Botha’s bountiful sculptural practice is rooted in a figurative idiom. Remarkably skilled as both a draughtsman and modeller, his work nonetheless rejects classical figuration in favour of an output marked by atomised forms and increasingly linear volumes. This work is exemplary of his frequent use of the sculptural bust in his practice. The artist has spoken of how he used to “anguish” over the process of making a bust, “because each one needed to be absolutely unique, which is farcical. I now see them as part of an on-going process … The one begets the other; it’s almost as if the same bust is being constantly remade.”¹ Similar to Portrait V (2009), a ceiling-hung bust made from bonded layers of wood, this work conjures its titular youth from layers of hardwood parquet blocks. In the manner of his busts and figures made from carved bibles, Botha does not obscure his source material in this lot. His work is not a fully resolved form. If anything, it proudly reveals its rude materialism.

 1. Wim Botha. (2014) Rooms: 2001-2014, Cape Town: Stevenson, page 3.

Exhibited

Stevenson, Johannesburg, A Thousand Things, 27 September to 2 November 2012.

Literature

Sophie Perryer (ed.) (2012) Wim Botha: Busts, 2003-2012. Cape Town: Stevenson. Illustrated in colour on page 78.