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My works are essentially surrealist. My subject matter is primarily dreams that I record which are intensely vivid, sometimes
more real than when I am awake. In my work I ask the question 'which is more real, the conscious or the sub-conscious?' this
concept I explore through my work. In my 2-D work I combine realism with a stylised
cubism in a surreal setting contrasting and yet marrying the two styles in an ironic sense. The realism depicting the conscious
and the stylised cubism depicting the sub-conscious. With my 3-D work I use the play of 3 dimensional aspects of a sculpture
contrasted with relief sculpting to again depict the conscious and sub-conscious worlds respectively. The idea of illusion
is to give a false or misleading impression of something, for something to appear to be what it is not, or at least more than
it is.
The question is, when does an idea become real? Or is an idea already real when it is conceived? If you
think of a design for a chair, which part of the process does the chair become real? Is it when you tell someone about the
idea? Is it when you do a sketch or when you source the materials? If you dream, is the dream not in fact the reality, and
the conscious mind just an idea? How do you prove this? Or is the idea only real only once you put the finishing touches to
the creation? If you answer the latter, one can argue that all the materials already exist at the time of the idea, and that
it is only the logistical exercise of the various components having a rendezvous at a particular point where the artist arranges
the materials/objects in the realisation of the creative idea.
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| The Artist |
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| Herman Jansen van Vuuren |
Another aspect of my art
that I explore is a desire to realise my aspirations in an idealistic sense influencing reality through auto suggestion. This
is similar in a sense to the Bushmen in Africa that painted their caves walls before going out to hunt. They used to pshyc themselves up before
a hunt and visualise themselves actually killing the animal already so that when they go out their motivation is high and
they are reassured of success as it has been resolved in their minds beforehand on the cave walls. I have completed a series
of pictures (Titles: ‘Let’s keep this between us’, and ‘Why can’t it always be like this?’
amongst others) which depicts the relationship I would have liked to have had with my wife, but at the time when I sketched
them we were separated for nine months but fortunately we are together again now.
With my stone sculpture I try to keep
the stone as natural as possible in its original shape as it was quarried. In sympathising with the stone, I impose on it
only what the stone is asking of me; I let the stone impose the limitations as a compromise so that as a partnership the outcome
is that the stone is beautified and the artist has expressed himself.
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