FOX PRETORIUS

TOPOGRAPHIES / 2018 - 2023 (ONGOING)

Since 2013 my process of artmaking has continuously manifested as a succession of series ranging from drawings, giclée print editions, Indian ink paintings with felt-tip pen sketches, acrylic paintings, woodcuts, and more recently, monotypes.

Stylistically, my work has freely moved back and forth and in-between figurative imagery and altogether abstraction. Though the works produced in different series have engaged with a range of interconnected discourses and topics, there is one continuous underlying theme that is ever more at the forefront in my work as evident in the ongoing production of all my work, yet especially so in my mixed media imagery: this theme is what I refer to as my (Immaterial) Topographies.

The term topography is to be understood as the graphic representation or mapping of a landscape’s surface. Originally, I explored this in conjunction with that which can be considered immaterial - either suggesting something that is of no significance or something that is not of a material substance. To me, this persistent theme of (immaterial) topographies relates to memory and experience as it is bound to place, i.e. to time and space (when they took place, where they took place). And the emotions related to the experiences informing our memories eventually seem to override the specific details of its time-space particulars, but for the memories to remain, however abstracted, aspects of these remain like non-material maps indicating an abstracted location where these memories continue to exist. I think of these as flowing inner landscapes - of no significance to others who cannot begin to comprehend who one might be because of this make-up of memories and experiences. Yet they do constitute an essential part of who we are, even more so when the prominence of our physical attributes diminishes or is vanquished.

In an ever-increasing material world, there is something deeply non-material, immaterial, even spiritual, about the collection of events and feelings we carry in life as individuals. As immensely personal and unique as they are, collectively these immaterial topographies become an abstracted attribute we share as human beings. And to remain authentic and true, what I present in my work as such is deeply subjective and personal.

From its onset, my art has explored the complex relation between landscape, experience, and memory - albeit in forms of addressing politics, identity, or various forms of hybridity (from the intercultural to the historic and personal). This pursuit has often served as an avenue of dissent towards the common notion of 'everything under the sun (i.e. in art) has already been done', for I believe it means something different to be human today than it did in previous times, or will do in times to come. And, if it means something different to be human today, there is something different to say and conceive about the present-day human condition and zeitgeist as an artist.

For me, it is through navigating new visual means of expressing my own immaterial topographies that I have found substance in this regard, for it holds something both highly intangible yet profoundly human all the same. More specifically, I value this for allowing me to delve into and grow in my own understanding of constructs like otherness, hybridity, loss, to be a dad, to know and understand loneliness amongst many, letting go of a former beloved country, raising sons in a language not my native own, and amongst an endless list, life as a Westerner from Africa in Asia.

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