Interview
Wessel van Huyssteen
Wessel van Huyssteen has been active as an artist, community arts educator, lecturer, curator and filmmaker since 1986. He has been nominated and won several local and international documentary film awards. In 2016, he started painting full time again and has since held three solo exhibitions and attended three international residencies as an invited artist. He completed his Masters of Art in Fine Arts at Wits University in 2017 and passed with distinction. He has collaborated in several South African group exhibitions and his works are in the South African National Art Bank collection in Bloemfontein, Glo’Art International collection in Maastricht, Belgium as well as the Philippe and Kinga de Chandelar Petro Collection in Hungary.
He is mainly interested in landscape and the concept of non-place and how to engage this phenomena in the age of the Anthropocene . He held his first solo exhibition titled ‘How to paint a highway' at Point of Order Project space at Wits University in 2017. This exhibition consisted of a series of large scale watercolor on paper paintings, inspired by travels on the N1. He investigated this structure within the landscape as both a unifying and dystopian South African space.
In August 2018 he held his second solo exhibition, Under a cobalt sky, at Gallery2 and his third, Between the Grid and the Mark in August- September 2020, also at Gallery2 in Johannesburg. His medium of choice remains watercolor but in his recent solo exhibition he included several mixed media and sculptural works. In 2021,he was invited to Nirox Foundation artist residency. His work is currently on display and will be installed as part of the permanent collection.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I studied fine art and graduated in 1985. Thereafter, I taught art and worked in the film industry as an art director. In 1991, I joined the Katelhong Art Centre and two years later, started the Visual Arts and Crafts Academy. During this period I continued to work in the film industry and curated several art exhibitions. In 1997 I moved to Sweden where I worked at the Cultural Centre in Stockholm as an assistant curator. I returned to SA in late 1998 and joined the film company, Tin Rage Productions.
I eventually bought the company and produced legions of documentaries, several being nominated and won local and international awards. In 2015, I started my Masters of Arts in Fine Arts at Wits University and graduated Cum Laude in 2017. Since then, I have been a full time artist and have held three solo shows, participated in several group shows, and attended several artists residencies. The most resent residency was at the prestigious Nirox Foundation at the Cradle of Humanity World Heritage Site. My work is due to be installed in the sculpture park before the end of November. In 2021, I opened "ark Contemporary" an artist collective gallery in Rosendal in the Eastern Free State. I am currently working towards my fourth solo exhibition.”
“Although my inspiration to make art stems from witnessing, what I consider unjust economic and social systems, I would not call myself an art activist. I am not interested in preaching, rather there is always the hope that an artwork you made will resonate with someone and create an opening for them to think differently or more actively about the landscape they live in. Hopefully it would facilitate a physical, mythical or emotional link and contribute to meta thoughts about our place in a community, the world and the universe.”
What inspires you most?
“I grew up on a farm in the Eastern Free State in South Africa. As a person identifying as gay, it was a difficult journey to navigate the unspoken rules of a racist and patriarchal society. When I reached late adolescents I immediately left off to the city, but stepping out of the 'pond' made me more aware of the injustices of land ownership, food production and the global systems responsible to keep the status quo in place. I made several documentaries dealing with these issues.
The DNA of my inspiration in my art making practice remains the landscape and the marks we leave and how those in turn shape our psyche and behaviour, the stories we tell and the memories we nurture. I often interrogate non-space and identify with current movements like eco-feminism and eco-socialism. After years of living in the city, I have returned to the countryside where commercial farming was once widely practiced, it has now shifted to industrial agriculture and only the mega farmer survives. The relation to soil is impersonal based on the extraction economy and long established communities are destroyed, stories of the land are evaporating and the conformity of a crypto fascist patriarchy is even more embedded than when I was a child. As devastating as this is I remain inspired by scientists who keep working towards sustainable food production.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“As I explained above, my inspiration comes from the landscape and the interaction we have with it. Place and non-place is very important to me. Between 2013 and 2017 I painted debris I found next to the N1 highway. This was the first national highway to be built in SA, stretching from Cape Town to the Zimbabwean border. The debris signified our current interaction with the landscape, but it is loaded with historical significance in that this road was the colonists' dream to open up a trade route from Cape to Cairo for the European market.
While I was in Budapest I painted state owned buildings that were under restoration. I wanted to capture a sense of place that reflected the crypto-fascist politics of the country and its impact on the cultural landscape.
During my residency at Entabeni Farm in Knysna in SA, by invitation of the South African Foundation of Contemporary Art, I painted the forest of invasive trees that, over a period of two hundred years completely changed the local biome. These invasive trees are suppressing all other plant life and this is directly due to the impact of my forefathers. They were the first foresters in the area and brought in the exotic plants from Australia and other countries for use in leather tanneries. I painted a series of works "Forests without memories" as atonement, but also as a nod to the book, "The Hidden Life of Trees" written by scientist and forester, Peter Wohhleben.
I often paint in painful detail as, although I deal with challenging subject matter, I still want to respect and pay attention to the minor details of the objects I represent, whether it is junk or weed, they all contain multiple levels of cultural history. In the same way I want the viewer to be pulled into the painting and force them to reckon with the micro and the macro world.”
How would you describe your work?
“I paint mainly in watercolour on paper. Traditionally, this is a medium not considered to be important. I relate to it as there is a delicacy about the medium contrary to the bravado of oil and even acrylic paint. Even though I worked in film for many years, I no longer want to work with digital mediums either as I like the solitary silence of painfully slow mark making in a studio far away from the maddening world. I hope this would describe my work. It is not a look, but a practice.
That said, I do venture into sculpture and multimedia work, but often these start out as maquettes I built as references for paintings. Somehow they end up claiming their own space and demand their rights as individuals in the studio. I think of them as works of obstinance.”
Which artists influence you most?
“I cannot say that one particular artist influenced me most. There has however been a series of artists I related to during my life and that I am sure subconsciously has an impact on how I paint and how I see the world. Among them would be Anselm Kiefer, Peter Doig, The 16th and 17th century Dutch landscape artists. As a student I admired the watercolour paintings of Zimbabwean artist Marion Arnold and the expressive watercolours of South African artist Alan Crump.
I have also had a long-standing fascination with the 19th century artists/colonists/ documenters/explorers/botanists. Watercolour was their medium while travelling to distant and exotic locations. The most well know in South Africa was Thomas Baines. Then there are a few photographers who keep inspiring me, the landscape photographs of Ansel Adams and David Goldblatt and the spiritually transformative photographs of Santu Mofokeng.”
What is your creative process like?
“I collect, whether they are photographs, pieces of wood or debris. Through this process I try to come to terms with the genus loci. I would then create a series of idea sketches and if the material I collected does not complete the idea then I will go out and scavenge some more. Once I have enough material, I make up maquettes that I photograph or I combine photographs to bring ideas together. I often digitally play with the resulting images in order to test compositions and colour. Once I am happy with the idea I work from my photographic references. It is a slow process, but once I commit to a painting I pretty much stick to the idea, sometimes to the detriment of the painting, which would then end in the bin. I like working on medium to large formats.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“This is a very difficult question. I suppose there is always a point in exploring the hope-gap. What I mean by the hope-gap is to create art that will connect people emotionally to ideas that can generate enough curiosity to challenge reigning dogma and encourage people to step off the treadmill and become active citizens, doing things and not just watching. I think this counts for identity politics, environmental and social concerns and fighting economic injustices. The age of the art 'manifesto' and protest art seems to have passed, but yet we are facing a world in great crisis.”
“I think art, for me at least, has a role to play in bringing back a sense of wonder to the world and connect people to each other and the planet, with all its inhabitants, on an emotional/spiritual level.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“ I have had several noteworthy exhibitions since 2014. These are some of them:
2021- Sept – November. SculptX. Melrose Gallery. Johannesburg; 2021- August – October. Nirox Foundation - Installation in Main studio. Cradle of Humanity World Heritage Site. Johannesburg; 2021 September 2021 – March 2023.South African Art @ Ninety One. Curated by ARTIQ - London; 2021 - July 2021. Free State Art Collective. Gallery2, Johannesburg; 2020- Latitudes Art Fair. South Africa; 2020 - 8 August-15 September. Between the Grid and the Mark - Solo exhibition @ Gallery2. Johannesburg; 2020- July-August. Journey of our Mind. Everard Read Gallery, Franschoek., South Africa; 2020 - 15 February-20 April. Attended artist residency at Entabeni Farm in Knysna by invitation of SAFFCA; 2019 - 1-6 July 2019 - Betwixt and Between - An exhibition by the Free State Art Collective curated by Karen Brusch for the Free State Arts Festival. In September 2019 Exhibition travelled to Gallery2 in Johannesburg; 2019 - 11-14 July 2019 - RMB Turbine Art Fair. Represented on fair by Free State Art Collective and Gallery 2; 2019 - 1-31 August 2019 - Invited artist to attend international residency program at Budapest Art Factory; 2018 - Under a Cobalt Sky - Solo exhibition at Gallery 2. (artist); 2017 - Emerging Visions: Telling the South African Story. The launch of the South African National Art Bank. Oliewenhuis Art Museum. (artist); 2017 – Invited artist Glo’Art International Residency – Maastricht; 2017 - Masters Exhibition How to Paint a Highway - Point of Order, Wits University. (artist); 2014 - Sasol New Signatures Finalist, Pretoria Art Museum (artist).”
