‘Aviary’ was the first solo-exhibition where Luan dealt with the theme and subject of birds and birdlife.
James Tates poem ‘The Blue Booby’ provides an entry to this ongoing body of work. In it he uses the language and style of the wildlife narrator to talk about this bird of the Galapagos. Initially it seems to nothing more than data and observations on this bird. Towards the last stanza it however becomes apparent that he uses this ‘mask’ to talk about much larger issues than simply the bird. He deals with desire, posession and sublimation. In a similiar way Luan attempt to use his ‘studies’ or ‘observations’ on birds and birdlife to speak about larger and sometimes deeply personal issues.
In 2010 Nel participated in a three person exhibition ‘Juncture’ along with Nigel Mullins and Tanya Poole.
In this exhibition Nel furthered his investigation of colonial furniture in the form of watercolours and oils. He did not do any Murals as was the case in his solo exhibition ‘Silent Exit‘.
Chair 2 Oil on canvas, 25cm x 20cmChair 4 Oil on canvas, 25cm x 20cmChair 13 Oil on canvas, 42cm x 29cm
The genesis of Luan Nel’s latest exhibition at Art on Paper Gallery is a couple of one gallon tins of wall paint dating from the 1950s that he chanced upon in one of the many second hand furniture shops that dot the long Street, “Blikkiesdorp”, or Albertville in Johannesburg. The faded label, with its Van Riebeeck trademark, not only prominently displays the well-known portrait of the 17th century Dutch colonist found in virtually every History school textbook, but also proudly declares Van Riebeeck paint as the “noblest paint of them all”. For Nel this was more than a serendipitous found object: he tested the paint and was delighted to discover that the high lead content preserved the paint inside the tins. He decided that the paint was not ‘found object’ per se, but rather ‘found medium’. With this new/old medium he executed three murals at Art on Paper Gallery: wall paint eminently suitable for the artist’s site specific artwork!
A name such as ‘Van Riebeeck wall paint’ can hardly be called a coincidence in the early 1950s, the time of the country-wide tri-centenary celebrations of the colonization of a private enterprise (the Dutch East India Company) by its emissary, Jan van Riebeeck. Van Riebeeck paint was a prosaic, albeit banal, spin-off of a mid-twentieth century reinvention of a South African colonial past. The reaffirmation of this past was even more controversial in the early 1930s with Jan Juta’s mural of Jan van Riebeeck in South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London. The original central panel showed Van Riebeeck having landed, with his ships off the coast, and a group of his followers kneeling under a large cross, which dominates the painting. Afrikaner nationalists objected to what was perceived as a representation that encouraged a view of Van Riebeeck as a Catholic. After much resistance from Charles te Water, the High Commissioner, the mural was duly replaced with a less contentious rendition of the Dutch landing.
What was generally overlooked during this debacle was the wooden furniture in the ‘voorkamer’ of South Africa House, notably an excellent collection of 17th and 18th century Cape chairs. Not surprisingly, the chair became the central motif in Luan Nel’s new body of work. His chairs, however, are empty, de-contextualized, depicting only a minimal sense of front, back and side elevations of the chairs. Nel harnesses his usual interest in proportion – minute miniature water colours and oil paintings of chairs, to life size depictions of these chairs in the murals – to great effect.
He is also no stranger to the exploration of the mural in his art. Nel used the mosaic murals at the Forno Italico, Rome, originally known as the Forno Mussolini, the giant sports complex of the 1930s, conceived as a temple to the Fascist cult of athleticism, portraying virile sportsmen in various stages of undress, in two light box works entitled, The Pool at the Studio Dei Marmi (1999/2000). In the same manner in which these light boxes invoke an oppressive past permanently inscribed on the wall, the new work on this exhibition comment on an iniquitous local past. Nel strips history of all external trappings and shows us an empty chair in its place. The title of this exhibition, Silent Exit, captures a shameful retreat if not a form of penitence. What is left is an empty seat: a seat perhaps to be occupied by a new leader.
The Cape chair Nel depicts on this exhibition has even more metaphorical connotations than that of a seat of power. It symbolizes a form of cultural hybridity as well. The 17th century Dutch chair has undergone many subtle changes in the ensuing three centuries on South African soil. So had the people in the country. The chair is an apt metaphor for hybridity – mutual changes that take place inadvertently when different cultures come into contact or clash with one another. New hybrid forms include such chairs as the cot or corner chair, the ‘burgomeester’ or wheel chair, and the ‘Tulbagh’ chair. (Atmore, 1974. Cape Furniture). Woodhouse laments in his book, The Interior of the Cape House (1982) that “it is a great pity that we have nothing but a very inadequate inventory of descriptions to guide us”. Nel provides an alternative inventory on this exhibition.
‘Muse’. A group exhibition of portraits. Artisits were asked to do a portrait of somebody in the South African ‘artworld’.
The exhibition was held at The Klein Karoo Arts Festival – Oudtshoorn and later at Brundyn+Gonsalves Gallery – Cape Town.
I have chosen to do a portrait of Alet Voster, a gallerist and friend. (When briefed that it should be a contemporary within the artworld – Alet as subject just made sense). One problem….. you will battle to find a more self-effacing personality in this our ‘artworld’. Alet does not enjoy having her image taken and the prospect of a full portrait was simply not on. This created a bit of a dilemma for me the artist. I remembered that Alet told me she was going to New York and on this trip she might be able to purchase the one and only colour lipstick that she wears – basically her whole adult life – Christian Dior nr. 763, Rouge Mysore/Indian Red. It is no longer available in South Africa. Having arrived in New York she tried to get the colour there, it was discontinued. This ‘colourfield’ is an attempt to capture that colour, just one receptacle of an amazing identity. Alet had to change to a new lipcolour. She remains amazing.” – Luan Nel
Johannesburg-based Luan Nel’s first solo exhibition in KwaZulu Natal entitled ‘Smallville SA’, met with great acclaim. Nel bases his works on the notion of dioramas, like those typically used in museum display. Nel replaces and re-contextualises miniature figurines from model trainsets by setting them on large, mostly unaltered canvas backgrounds. In this way, he explores the construction of male identity and deals with issues of control, escape, obsession and secrecy.
The scale and positioning of Nel’s miniscule figures forces the viewer to interact with them up close. Attaching the figures to the canvas by their feet, Nel constructs the scenes on the walls as if seen from above, inevitably making the viewer feel like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput. The figures Nel chooses are sometimes grouped, other times alone; some are dressed in business suits, while others recline in bathing suits apparently on a beach. Harsh top lighting causes the figures to throw long shadows, much larger than themselves. So effective is this lighting that the glue used to adhere the figures to the canvas is visible in the shadows, detracting to some degree from the impact of the scenarios Nel constructs from these readymades.
Scale is inarguably central to the works’ interpretation, and Nel explores this further in a series of prints. In these he takes photographs of the figurines in works such as Heroes Officers, Heroes Firemen enlarges these and prints them on vinyl. This shifts the relationship between artwork and viewer significantly and one is now forced to look up at the images. The prints are also accompanied by a series of detailed watercolour portraits of some of the figures, demonstrating his characteristic remarkable skill and attention to detail, leaving one wishing that he could have applied such precision to the rest of the exhibition.
In Hobby Heroes Luan Nel appropriates the miniscule plastic figures from specialist train set kits, so beloved of the Hobbyists for whom trains, and anything to do with them, are a life-sustaining passion. He stages these surprisingly idiosyncratic figures, ranging from punks to boy scouts, in a number of curious situations…. Read the complete Hobby Heroes text by Yvette Greslé.
This installation was part of the project Silence/Violence curated by Greg Streak in Nieuw Bethesda and Durban respectively. Kapok/Wind was part of the Silence exhibition. I attempted to speak about silence by mimicing snowfall (kapok). This was done by tying 2,400 meters of white ribbon to the landscape. The landscape read like a drawing only animated with the help of the wind blowing through the ribbons. Wind by its nature is air in its active and violent state. I tried to show that silence and violence are rarely popular opposites.
NIGHT/LIGHT
This work took place in Durban as part of the Violence exhibition of the project Silence/Violence. Similarly to the work in Nieuw Bethesda, I attempted to speak about the subject – in this case – Violence through its popular opposite, Silence. I created a segment of landscape within the gallery, and placed a child’s night-light in the form of a goose at the darkest end of this passage.
With this body of work I explored the concept home, specifically my sense of home/place whilst living in a foreign country. During my two years living and working in the Netherlands, whilst at The Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, I experienced a true sense of being ‘foreign’ for the first time in my life. It was a very sobering experience. During this time I still maintained my long term relationship with my partner in South Africa. We managed regular visits due to his accepting all conference invitations in The Netherlands and Belgium. On each of these trips KLM (airlaine) presented the passenger with one of these collectable vessels shaped like dutch houses. In a very direct way they speak about ‘home’ but by receiving them only when my partner visits deepened this meaning.” – Luan Nel
