Notes

"Unfinished Man, is a large canvas whose surface is covered in layers of paint scraped back in various places to reveal underlying paint and ground. Very lightly, an image of a man and woman is painted in a similar tone. We are told that these are images from an 18th Century scientific text. On top of these figures, in turn, is a copy of a table and text from a similarly dated document, which was used to determine the moral character of a human by calculating the proportion of their weight to their height. Needless to say, Negroid races are described as difficult to analyse, but probably 'degenerate'. This text and table is beautifully transcribed, painted and incised into the surface. The colours are of mixed hue and all of similar tones. The work is formally very understated and seductively subtle in its execution.

Fortunately we have redressed some of the peculiar ideologies described above. Unfortunately, perhaps we are unable to tell just what our contemporary ideological idiosyncrasies are. So, this exploration is relevant and interesting." (https://artthrob.co.za/99aug/reviews.html)

Exhibited

Association for Visual Arts Gallery, Cape Town, Nadja Daehnke: Unfinished Man, 1999.