AbstRacT – Synchrony Revealed

Timed Online Auction, 4 - 23 July 2025

AbstRacT – Synchrony Revealed
About the Session

In 2024, the Rupert Museum presented AbstRacT – The Hidden Synchrony, an exhibition inspired by Oscar Forel’s Synchromies series - close-up photographs of tree bark that transformed the familiar into bold abstraction. These works were paired with South African modernist paintings from the museum’s collection, creating surprising visual harmonies and fresh interpretations.

Building on this concept, AbstRacT – Synchrony Revealed is the result of the museum’s third Open Call, which received over 300 submissions. From these, 41 artists were selected to showcase their work in a group exhibition - now part of an exclusive online auction in collaboration with Strauss & Co.

The auction offers collectors a chance to discover new voices engaging with themes of ecology, memory, materiality, and abstraction. Each work reveals a dynamic interplay between natural form and artistic expression - where chance, structure, and symbolism collide.

During the period of the online auction the exhibition is accessible to be viewed at the Jan Rupert Art Centre, 41 Middle street, Graaff-Reinet.

Collection of the artworks will be available once the exhibition closes on 16 November 2025.

Please contact Eliz-Marie Schoonbee to arrange collection/delivery

tel: 021 888 3261

email: eliz-marie@rupertmuseum.org


Current Bid

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Lot 37
  • Jonathan van der Walt; Mine
  • Jonathan van der Walt; Mine
  • Jonathan van der Walt; Mine


Lot Estimate
ZAR 30 000 - 50 000
Current Bid
Starting at ZAR 30 000
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About this Item

South African 1991-
Mine
2024
braaiwood, goldleaf, charcoal, 3D printed PLA and resin, on MDF plinths with mirror glass
Resin pieces: height: 18 - 32cm; width: 10cm; depth: 12cm; installation size: height: 80cm; width: 17cm; depth: 66cm and height: 100cm; width: 17cm; depth: 58cm

Notes

Mine speaks to the weight of inheritance – the land claimed, the histories unearthed, and the legacies that persist. Part of a larger body of work titled From the Woods to the Soil, it forms an introspective journey into the complexities of white African identity, explored through the critical and cultural lens of the braai. Encased in five resin forms, the piece captures fragments of this layered heritage: braaiwood, gold leaf, 3D printing plastic, and ash. Each material reflects cycles of settlement and disruption. Braaiwood, often an invasive species, alludes to a colonial past – a (family) tree alien to this land, yet embedded in its soil. This symbol now fuels a fire central to South African culture, a quiet relic of forced adaptation. Fire emerges as a powerful force – destructive and generative – transforming, erasing, and exposing. Ash, the residue of what once was, sits alongside the synthetic precision of 3D-printed plastic, opening a dialogue between past and digital present, between inherited identities and those we reconstruct. The transparent resin acts as both time capsule and clinical sample – an attempt to isolate and examine histories still rooted in land and psyche. Suspended like specimens of memory, these elements become fragments of a personal and collective past, held up to new scrutiny. Mine asks what truly belongs to us, what we inherit, and what we choose to carry forward.

View all Jonathan van der Walt lots for sale in this auction