Elize Vossgätter (b. 1981, South Africa) explores the tensions between the organic and the synthetic. She observes the emerging ecologies created by the integration of plastics and other polymers into ecosystems and the disruptive economics of waste systems.

“What strange natures are we making?

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The exhibition follows a 6-week residency in the Thiess region of Senegal. “Here, I had the opportunity to observe a different ecosystem: a new crossroads of shapes, sounds and colors, light and humidity. And yet, many things were familiar: humans creating, innovating, consuming and discarding. The landscape retains the intimate exchange between people and their waste, and the environment becomes an augmented color field.”

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Planet Earth is a closed system, and everything created on it stays there (Mehita Iqani, “What could Rubbish say?”; 2023).

 

Beeswax is the material with which she explores these ideas. It is an inherently mercurial medium - conservative by nature, but vulnerable to temperature. This “instability of states” is used as an analogy to explore themes of temporality and transformation in the context of a warming planet and impending climate crisis.

 

“In this exhibition, I have integrated other raw materials with wax: latex-sap, ground pigments, found plastic, aluminum car parts, found natural objects - to create a sensory atmosphere or ecosystem of a world in disequilibrium, observing the temporary co-mutation of human and non-human worlds. The paintings evoke natural processes such as attrition, sedimentation and erosion, while referring to man-made processes. They evoke a post-natural state in which organic processes begin to adapt to and co-evolve with synthesized contagions, creating hybrid ecosystems.” 

Color speaks.

COLOR DISTURBS.

Color cannot be contained.

Color is not subordinate. No “thing” is pure.

Impurity is renewed.

The color screams !

 

“Mankind has an ingenious ability to shape and reshape nature. In doing so, we have manufactured synthetic materials and chemical polymers far removed from nature, which are forced to integrate with organic processes of biodeterioration, altering the natural mechanisms of recovery and growth on which the planet depends. In this tug-of-war between innovation and degradation, humanity has systematically imposed the coevolution of natural life forms with abstract human “things”, with little or no understanding of the effects of this symbiosis.”

 

“The end is colorful” is the artist's first international exhibition. This exhibition follows the completion of her Master's degree in Cape Town in 2023 (with honors). She has organized seven solo exhibitions in South Africa over the past ten years, as well as numerous group shows and residencies abroad, including in New York, Istanbul and Leipzig. Her collections include the Saxon State Collection (Germany), the Francis Greenburger Collection (New York) and the Spier Collection (South Africa). She took part in the official Dakar Biennale in 2022.

She is represented by Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, since 2019.

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“I would particularly like to thank the following artists, with whom I had the privilege of working:

Issouf Zoungrana, the bronzier from Burkina Faso, who works with the traditional lost-wax casting technique using mud and fire, and who produced the recycled metal works for the exhibition.

Jonathon Durno, who always manages to translate my vision and 3D captures into an animated field.

And to my son, Sam O'Connor, who is studying music production in Berlin and created the soundscape for the animation.”