Vertoef/Linger, the Andries Gouws exhibition of paintings at the Irma Stern Museum, will be opened by Hayden Proud (curator of historical art at the Iziko National Gallery) on Saturday 4 August at 11 am. The exhibition, which shows selected paintings made between 2012 and 2018, previously ran at the Pretoria Art Museum and the KZNSA Gallery in Durban.
Andries Gouws studied art in Cape Town (UCT’s Michaelis School of Art), Italy, Dusseldorf and Amsterdam, and philosophy in Utrecht, finally spending 17 years in Holland. He is married to the novelist and artist Ingrid Winterbach; they have two daughters and one grandson. Gouws had previous one man shows in Chicago, Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Grahamstown, Kimberley, Potchefstroom and Oudtshoorn.
The artist will conduct walkabouts of his exhibition on Tuesday 7 August at 12 pm and on Saturday 18 August at 11 am.
Artist’s statement
Why do I paint the way I do? Why do I paint all these rooms without people, these mirrors, these feet? I don’t know. What do my paintings mean? I don’t know.
As an artist and as a philosopher I have learnt that there is no verbal equivalent for what happens visually in a painting. Moreover, the artist’s words carry no special authority. I tread gingerly when making an artist’s statement. Whatever I say is speculative and tentative. The silence or muteness I strive for in my paintings would be lost if they suggested a meaning which can be captured directly in words.
Meditation – lingering in an awareness of the here and now – plays a large role in my life. To me the mood of my paintings suggests something between the meditative and a sense of failure, perhaps abjection. Had they been only meditative I don’t think viewers would have found them awkward, uncanny or even desolate, in the way they do.
Art works don’t simply arise from the artist’s personal experience, but always also from a dialogue with other artists. My paintings are a modest salute to painters like Vermeer, Piero, Morandi, Arikha, and how they capture light, space and stillness. Much as I admire artists like Goya, Guston and Kentridge, who engage with the problems and terrors of the social and political world, I can’t emulate them – the place my work arises from is too different.
WHERE: Irma Stern Museum, 21 Cecil Road, Rosebank, Cape Town 7600
WHEN: Opening Saturday 4 August to 24 August 2018. Tuesday – Friday 10h00 – 17h00 | Saturday 10h00 – 14h00 | Tel: +27(0)21 685 5686
