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One of the most prominent art works at the 2010 Joburg Art Fair was Paula Louw’s dismantled and framed hand gun exhibited by Everard Read Gallery.

Paula Margaret Maritz Louw is a famous, tall, charismatic, fifty-something Johannesburg artist that makes original, intricate, beautiful and striking works. She dissembles typewriters, pianos and guns, then mounts and frames their pieces.

Paula says: “In the days when manual typewriters were used, a slower form of communication demanded greater reverence and respect in our manner of addressing people. When I was a child, my late father was General Manager of Olivetti in South Africa, which created for me a very personal connection with typewriters. He had an analytical mind and a great love for words and language and read the Shorter Oxford Dictionary for pleasure.”…and: ”These typewriter works, in a sense, stop time.  My intention is that, caught by wire, the ancient typewriter pieces should seem to hold within them unwritten poems, memories, histories, and have a type of melancholy in a way that something temporary has, yet still have the sense of something lasting.”

At Joburg Art fair her triptych gun sold for close to $20000. And the gallerist told Paula to make two more as soon as she can, because of the big demand.  Everard Reid is a well established gallery founded in the early 1900s. If you remember that Johannesburg was found at the very end of 1800s, this gallery is one of the oldest.

Paula bought the gun in 1993 when the tensions were rising in South Africa. She got the gun license a year later just when the great historical political changes were taking place. She never used the gun, but kept it in her home.  The government recently announced that the new legislation forbids bearing fire arms, but an amnesty period was given for owners to deactivate them.  It took Paula two weeks to go through the procedure. This included firing from the gun to get the bullet prints. After it was done, she made the triptych with the parts and named it “A Simple Piece”.

Paula says this piece for her was a symbol for dismantling the violence: “…taking aggressive attitudes and angry words and breaking them down, making something beautiful of them.  Flanked by Mr. Mandela’s words I trust that it will prod people to recall the incredible foundation of hope, tolerance and good will that our constitution in South Africa is based on!”

Harmony and Dischord, 2009

piano detail

26-28 March, Johannesburg, South Africa

South African art community had the most interesting event this weekend.  Organised by Artlogic at Sandton Convention Center, 23 participating galleries featured the work of about 400 artists and 40 designers from South Africa and the greater Continent. This rich northern Johannesburg suburb was crowded with people, most of them white. Since 1994, when the apartheid dissolved and the inner city deteriorated, the white and the rich moved their center to a safer area.  Art in South Africa is predominantly white, but hopefully and most probably less so in the future.  The central square in Sandton is called Nelson Mandela Square, the international symbol for racial and class peaceful reconciliation.  The upcoming world football cup will have to prove that as well and establish South African position as the leader of black African resurgence.

The Joburg Art Fair showcased the cream of contemporary artistic production, and represented a critical platform for positioning African artists as players in the international art arena. Compared to other similar events around the world’s big cities, this Art Fair was surprisingly non-commercial in its look, very contemporary, innovative, authentic and progressive, local and relevant at the same time.  In the third consecutive year, the Joburg Art Fair has established itself as a key event in the dense schedule of galleries, artists, buyers, sellers, collectors. The only event of it’s kind in Africa, a smaller substitute for the unsuccessful biannual, this 2010 Fair’s theme was “Art & Industry,” and it featured 11 special projects.

One featured artist was Durban-born, US-based Siemon Allen, well known for the way he draws unseen meanings out of his collections of ordinary objects. Operating from an external vantage point, he systematically accumulates mass-produced printed material, which he ultimately catalogues and displays. The most current collection, an archive of South African audio, is made up of about 2000 items, including 500 rare 78 rpm shellac discs. Records (2009) is a series of 12 large format prints on velvet archival paper selected and scanned from artist’s large LP collection. The scans of the records produce remarkable detail capturing not only the grooves, but also the accumulated historic traces of sketches and damage that speak about memory of the object. These prints are considered by Allen to be part of his audio collection and speak to the primacy of music in South African cultural history; they are silent. Allen today lives and works in Baltimore, USA. For this occasion, he bought an expensive Epson ink-jet printer and paper to make a highly achievable material. He mounted and framed the prints in New York for about $5000. The work was presented by Gordon Schacha Collection in collaboration with Artlogic.

Another work I thought was very clever, beautiful and funny was a video piece by Goddy Leye entitled, “The Beautiful Beast”, presented by Peter Hermann Gallery from Berlin.  Peter Hermann, one of the many gallerists and producers form Berlin who work in Johannesburg, as an expert on African Art also serves as a consultant on relevant political and economic matters. Goddy Leye is a Cameroonian artist from Bonendale, Doula and a studio called “ArtBakery”. The video is shown on the floor of a dark room, and it features the artist himself laying on the floor, eating fruit around him and singing a song “We Are the World.” Since he munches on fruit the lyrics are not always clear, but there is a superimposed text following his singing. I think it shows a stereotype of an African in a very direct but also aesthetic and inventive way.

The last work I would point out was a South African veteran and international contemporary art star William Kentridge’s photo object installation presented by The Goodman Gallery and curated by Jane Taylor. These small photo-collage figures mounted on cardboard and displayed on a shelf are actually costume designs for an opera he is directing. The invitation to direct “The Nose” follows Kentridge’s productions of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’ Ulisse and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, both of which had seasons in South Africa. There is a considerable excitement in the global art community about this new production, and much interest in Kentridge’s experimental studio preparations these figures are part of. His designs, drawings, and projections add a powerful third dimension to this complex and enigmatic opera, Shostakovich’s interpretation of a short story by the great Russian writer and satirist, Nikolai Gogol. His famous drawings, drawn animation and prints share the same style and feeling.  Some of the other reoccurring themes at the Joburg Art Fair were wildlife, soccer, documentary photography from the violent past and poverty. But the variety of work was great and the attendance impressive. The architect that designed the space was Miriam Wolf and the main curator Kobbie Loubschangni.

Sinakho Sadhikge

(UDRC) Universal Design Research Centar established 2004. on the ground floor of Culture Building on KyngSung University campus in Busan

Ho-soong Lee, Professor of product Design at Graduate School of Digital Design and Director of UDRC. In the office, in the showroom and in the studio with designers

In his book Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, Bill Buxton says that “there is something that you can actively experience: something that involves dynamics or time; something with behavior that is usually the software running on an embedded microprocessor; and something whose design needs to be grounded in the nature of that experience … there are techniques and processes whereby we can put experience front and centre in design.  My belief is that the basis for doing so lies in extending the traditional practice of sketching.” 

There is one case study and an example I would like to share.  It is about a technique for bringing design thinking to a universal design product and the experience it engendered.  It happened at KyungSung University, in the city of Busan, in South Korea, in the spring of 2006.  Ho-soong Lee hired Bong-gun Lee to help him with an illustration for an article he was writing.  Ho-soong Lee is a professor of product design at Graduate School of Digital Design, but he is also the head of the highly prestigious Universal Design Research Center located on the campus of the same University and funded by the Korean government.  Bong-gun Lee was a master student of computer animation at the same department at the time, and today he works as a 3D artist at a company he co-owns and as a part-timelecturer in 3D Studio Max software . 

Ho-soong Lee showing the booklet where the illustration was printed and the file he used for printing

Bong-gun Lee, a CG artist, in the Graduate School of Digital Design animation studio, showing the work he made for Hosoong Lee. He is howing the model and the rendering process he used

Universal Design Research Center in Busan, South Korea is a small, but very advanced and important institution (Universal design refers to a broad-spectrum solution that produces buildings, products and environments that are usable and effective for everyone, not just people with disabilities).  Hosoong Lee hires students to help him, some for a specific job and some more permanent.  When he decided he needed a 3D model, his choice fell on Bong.  In virtual reality of universal design presentations, there are always mannequins.  They have to represent people in general, or specific kind of people.  Hosoong needed a kid, a man, and an old man, by Korean standards.  But he could not keep a consistent size and get many postures realistic with making only sketches.  He needed something devoid of human variation or error.  A simple outline drawing was unassuming and ideal for this kind of illustration.  There should be no texture, no color, and no shadow. 

Together with Bong, Hosoong found the solution – finalToon render in 3D Max Studio.  Bong got some sketches from Hosoong and modeled with subdivided polygons three different types of humans.  He even had them animated sitting down in a wheel chair.  He chose a few positions to render, and looked very good – aesthetically it was very satisfying and it served the purpose very well.  Hosoong can draw very well, but for this occasion he needed something that looked flawless.   This is an example of how new technology is changing aesthetics and how innovative solutions can augment the virtual reality of a specific area and work cross-disciplinary.  This case study is one of many where collaboration brings good results and happy solutions.

Some renderings of a kid, man and old man

The illustration on the computer screen

In their book Visualization: Using Computer Graphics to Explore Data and Present Information, a group of authors starting with Judith R. Brown, say that “computer graphics and visualization have revolutionized the way we interact with and understand data – transforming our data into information -and the way we communicate that information to others […]computer graphics is the basic technology for visualization and implementation of interactive dialogues in design and engineering applications […] is also a key technology for enabling important trends in computer science and information technology.”  So there is a certain Virtual Reality standard developing for understanding the world around us.  That standard is determined by the best ways to present specific data visually, so it can be understood and shared more easily.  The visual design software engineers are devising the new reality the best way they can reproduce our reality with technology.  The new understanding of the world comes through this virtual reality presentations and the language of visualization the digital procedures require.  The software engineers are preoccupied with ”transforming data into (visual) information” and the new aesthetics becomes a derivative of that process.  The artist makes things clear and simple so the viewer can have the highest benefit from the information he/she receives.

An example of outline drawing-like rendering of a #D model of a kid sitting in a wheelchair shown in perspective

finalToon rendering of the model in 3D Studio Max with shadow, body and specular as white