CHRISTINA VAN DER MERWE / CALENDER
On view August 27–October 2, 2021
Opening Reception
August 27 from 6–8pm
Exhibition is open by appointment at Maake Projects.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Christina Van Der Merwe’s intimately scaled paintings use oil-based paints, cold wax, and sea sand collected from the North East coast. The paintings often begin with a specific hue or expression, sometimes with a composition in mind and other times responding to particular gestures such as the spiral. Paint is applied in thick layers of impasto with a palette knife and then drawn, carved, sculpted or scraped away leaving some paintings thick and others thin, almost erased. This push and pull of the material creates tension of the surface and the depth perception. The spiral, a re-occuring motif, represents a merging of opposites from the vast and intimate to the mystical and the natural. Reaching back into memories of growing up in South Africa and shifting into the present, Van Der Merwe creates objects that embody the process of time and change. Essentially it is the process of painting, the force of making, that for her is a kind of weather- elemental, uncontrollable, and powerful.
For her current show, Calendar, at Maake Projects, 31 paintings mark the perimeter of the exhibition space inspired by ideas around charts, water currents, winds, typography, sunlight and atmosphere. The large arched windows within the space evoke the merging of the sky and land which serves as a guide to hang the paintings. The horizontal beam separating the arch and the rectangular window panes mark the middle of the paintings. The works one after another, each separated 10 inches apart, echo the passing of time, seasons and moods. All artifical light is stripped away leaving the room to be lit from the sun itself as shadows and light swirl and move within and around the paintings. As poet Alex Baker elegantly writes in the show’s press release..., “her calendar ready to fill/ a prophetic formulation”.
