Encore

Notes

In the 1990s Norman Catherine experimented with large-scale fibreglass sculptural figures such as the present lot. Hazel Friedman notes: “Norman Catherine’s life-size sculptures have broken free from the canvas and the confines of the relief backdrop asserting themselves in a free-standing space and dwarfing the artist himself. But their exaggerated scale acquires an added surrealness through the absurd masks they wear and their distorted body parts and gestures. Despite their imposing size, these sculptures are not the scary monsters of Catherine’s early work. They exist alongside the artist, sometimes infiltrating his space, but no longer threatening his psyche.

“Years after he began his career Catherine remains the shaman, intent on depicting the horrible in the thing itself. He still slips stealthily into altered states of consciousness through manipulation of irrational spaces, time warps, and extremes of scale. He remains the trickster, the juggler, and the joker in the pack. And his embrace of hearts of darkness through the art of dark humour continues to infuse the apparent madness in his work with method, logic and light.”¹

^1. Hazel Friedman (2000) 'Role Call' , in Nicolas Combrinck (ed) (2000) Norman Catherine. Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery, page 123.