FOX PRETORIUS

ARTIST BIO

Francois "Fox" Pretorius is a contemporary visual artist whose work as characterised by its strongly contrasted experimental abstraction and its conceptual interplay between content and medium. 

While his earlier work explored social commentary and intertextuality embedded in narratives reflecting personal history and identity, more recently he has shifted his attention to exploring spatial reflections within contemporary urban life, employing a range of media to examine the intricate interplay of space, movement, and societal rhythms. This has also extended into works reinterpreting coffee culture and new technology as contemporary still-lifes, transforming its objects into icons of present-day culture. The prominent ongoing recurring theme in his art remains the interplay between chaos and order, and often its ensuing entropy, imbuing his work with a sense of tension and balance.

Originally from South Africa, Pretorius has exhibited his work internationally for over a decade. His art has been described as visually and conceptually fluid, balancing irony, reflection, and incisiveness. As noted by acclaimed South African art critic Johan Myburg, "Pretorius' works invite the viewer to reconsider, re-evaluate, and rethink prevailing notions—not by outlining politics, but by reimagining the spaces where individual and collective experiences unfold."

He currently works and resides in the city of Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong to the north in mainland China.

----------------

ARTIST STATEMENT

Chaos and order: a universal intertidal force of ebb and flow. This ever-competing and changing relation is what best describes my work and the experimental nature of my creative process. It is always present through the ongoing contests and discourses active in my art: between visual structure and organic freedom, between the space of thought and the space of being, between idea and experience. 

Originally hailing from South Africa, I’ve spent many years working and traveling abroad, initially in Europe but since then more extensively in Asia, and have consequently been based in China since 2018. Memory, personal experience, and reflections on a fluctuating state of being, inform the narrative bulk of my recent work along with contemplations on the intricacies of identity, spatial relationships, love and loss, and the idiosyncrasies of everyday life as a foreigner.

----------------

BODIES OF WORK

Life changes have presaged important progressions in my creative practice. Each body of work, even those which may seem formally similar, are idiosyncratically unique statements. The Pendoring Paintings (since 2019 and onwards) are most reflective of where I come from. They use linear and spatial elements to reflect upon my personal life and my creative relationship, through linear and spatial dynamics, to art history, as the pendoring (or pen-like thorn) branches construct an organic lattice that recalls Abstract Expressionism yet protrude into the figurative marks left of memories. They are part and parcel of a search for a new visual language for my new chapter in China. The continuation of this search is expanded by The Hualikan series of monotype prints, which are more formally experimental as a means of expressing a coming-to-terms with living in urban China with its vastly different cultures, sub-cultures, norms and values; the Xingsha prints are more concerned with venting reflections upon a changing personal life; and the Taoyuancun prints turn outward again, encompassing the hustle of everyday city life, with specific reference to Shenzhen. Each of these series embodies the ambiguity of my experiences and yet matches them with a model for perceptual interpretation that is urgently emphatic. 

----------------

----------------

Ever tried. Ever failed. Never mind. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
- Samuel Beckett