Art Exhibitions

A Glass Darkly

opening address by Andrea Walters

 

In this all-new body of paintings and digital prints, Adelle van Zyl considers how we pay attention to the world around us, and limitations in our ability to see and understand things as they are. The artist suggests that we can grasp the world we live in by carefully absorbing intricate details and singular moments. Her work is highly personal. It speaks of absence and alone-ness, it is a tender yet critical look at her heritage and its cultural spaces. Rural churches, abandoned farmhouses and dejected inner-city buildings that usually go unnoticed are captured in dusk’s oblique, filtered sunlight, and they are transformed into magical, meaningful scenes.

 

Liminal interior spaces become loaded expressions of the intricacy and frailty of the human psyche. In the buildings van Zyl explores, mid-century pressed glass windows serve to obscure rather than to reveal, as light is allowed to enter but vision of the outside world is blocked. She is intrigued by the dualities of windows and mirrors, those thin edges that form the precipice between the real and its reflection, exterior and interior, the known and the hidden... The artist’s technical explorations of the theme and application of paint reflect this duality. Her paintings range from thinly layered translucent images revealing the stark geometry of architectural spaces, to sensuously thick impasto abstractions.

 

Through this intimate and intense meditation on interior details, van Zyl aims to transport the viewer to quiet, introspective spaces where they can pause, absorb, and reflect.

 

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.”

The Holy Bible: 1 Corinthians 13:12. (KJV & NIT)

Address: 166 Bulwer Rd. Glenwood

Tel: +27 031 277 1705

Hours: Tuesday - Friday 09:00 - 17:00. Saturday 09:00 - 16:00. Sunday and Public Holidays 10:00 - 15:00.