Bevan de Wet | Drawing on Entropy

 

July 2018

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A seemingly fragile surface resists. Pushing through, seeking the threshold. Marks and colours morph together organically, living and breathing - structure perishes. Unearthing subdermal layers, fossil-like traces hint at entropy. The cyclical process repeating again, to become and decay. 
 
Drawing on Entropy, is a dialogue of mediums exploring the use of experimental drawing and painting as a means to embrace chance and the ephemeral cycle of creation and disintegration. The work forms an allegory for the breakdown of our traditional values, and the fragmented nature of our engagement with space and relation to the world. 

The performative process embraces randomness, resulting in a newly unfamiliar and abstract landscape which draws attention to our increasing alienation from nature and the spaces we inhabit.

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Bevan de Wet (b.1985) is an artist and printmaker based in Johannesburg, South Africa. De Wet works primarily with paper, exploring etching, relief printing, papermaking, drawing and paper folding techniques. He has exhibited extensively, both locally and internationally, including New Forms: A Study of Broken Parallels (solo, Candice Berman Gallery, 2017), Origins & Trajectories, Paris (2016); International Printmaking Alliance Exhibition, China (2016-17); Vestige (solo, NIROX Projects, 2014). The artist’s work is held in a number of private and public collections including The Wits Art Museum, the South African Embassy in Washington DC, and the Ahmanson Foundation in Los Angeles.
 
In 2012, de Wet was awarded a fellowship from the Ampersand Foundation (New York 2013) and also received the Thami Mnyele Art on Paper Merit Award. In 2014, he was an ABSA L’Atelier Merit Award Winner with the Sylt Foundation, granting him a 2-month residency on the Island of Sylt (Germany 2015). He received an ImpACT Award for Visual Art from the Arts and Culture Trust (2014). In 2017, de Wet travelled to Ireland for the Cill Rialaig Artists Residency. De Wet runs his own print studio in the Johannesburg CBD, where he is currently working towards new solo projects for 2018.