We originally saw these images on Facebook and were drawn to their abstraction and ambiguity, knowing that they were sourced from the artist’s photographs of the night skies of Cape Town from the balcony of his home, taken over a period of time. 

On meeting Johann du Plessis and hearing about the concept behind the images – that they represented his way of starting to make sense of a two-year life-changing encounter with cancer – the universality of this kind of experience became apparent, and how it often seems ‘illogical’, as Johann says, rendering the individual ‘weightless’.  

Johann selected the works for Room with a View from a more substantial series. Part of his process of working through and dealing with the ‘layers of reality’ revealed by this episode, and his reflections on the transitory nature of one’s life journey, took the form of reworking and manipulating the images with drawing, painting and collage. Ultimately they became less about the physical space and more about humanising his environment in an attempt to create a sense of ‘self-assurance, comfort and logic’.

This courageous artist has responded creatively to circumstances that threatened to dissolve his life by undertaking a vital journey using his own sense of personal space to re-engage with the outside world.

Born 1953, Frankfort, Free State Province. South Africa
1981 graduated with BA (FA) and (HED) from the University of the Free State.
Johann du Plessis is a practicing artist who has specialised in drawing, printmaking, and collage, and more recently has been exploring digital artmaking.
He has exhibited widely locally and internationally, being represented in local and international private, public, and corporate collections.
He has received numerous awards locally and internationally.

Professional work experience
Since 1981 du Plessis has been involved in art education
2005 co-founder and editor of CONTEMPO magazine
2007 curator and co-ordinator of the FNB-PC Art and Wine Route at the CULTIVAL ART Festival
Since 2009, a Member of the Western Cape Cultural Commission
2009 Gallery Manager and curator at iART Gallery, Cape Town
2009 - 2010 curator and manager of The Gallery at Grande Provence, Franschhoek, Western Cape

Exhibitions
Since 1979, du Plessis has held 16 solo exhibitions; participated in numerous group exhibitions, national and international touring exhibitions and competitions; and won awards.

For more biographical detail and a full exhibition CV, please look at his Artist Profile Catalogue under the pdf catalogue bar below.

Contact details
cell: +27 71 503 1043
email: jdpart.johann@gmail.com
website: www.johannduplessis.com (under construction OCT 2014)

artist’s statement 

Johann du Plessis 2014

Le monde est double (Au-delà)
visible et invisible
le soleil, la lune
les ombres de la nuit, le jour
et nous, nous sommes ensemble,
au-delà des apparences
au-delà du visible
dans un lieu inhabité
où il n’y a
que la musique de la solitude

 

The world is double
visible and invisible
the sun, the moon
the shadows of the night, the day
and we, we are together
beyond appearances
beyond the visible
in an uninhabited place
where there is nothing
but the music of solitude

 

The series of twelve works that form the exhibition Room with a view are based on photographs taken by the artist from the balcony of his apartment in Mouille Point, Cape Town. The photographs were edited, reinterpreted, reworked, scanned, printed to become a catalyst for du Plessis’s hope to engage and raise the white flag towards ‘safety’.

In creating the artworks, he ‘speaks’ about the unspeakable – dealing with emotions, the ‘experiencing’ of that which is ‘seen’ as ‘illogical’ or ‘weightless’. The works reflect how the artist is trying to humanize the surroundings to become more reassuring and thus giving us self-assurance, comfort and logic. These works reflect moments in time and space, or rather through time and space – letting go of the ‘now’, allowing ideas to form meaning through different layers of reality – an interplay between the passing and dissolving of time.

Die stilte in die werke spreek van die eenvoud waarna du Plessis streef en probeer
verbeeld en hy vra ons om stil te staan en nie net te kyk nie, maar ook te ‘luister’ – soos hy hom
oorgee aan die klanke van die heelal.
Elke werk het vir hom besondere betekenis, maar is ook ‘n oomblik wat ‘n verskil maak aan sy
lewe. En agter die wit lyne, merke en vorms wag die hemelruim - ‘n ander realiteit.
du Plessis neem ons verder as die visuele, na oordenking, na ons eie innerlikheid en
sodoende na die toestand en die wese van die mensdom.

 

Die wêrels is dubbel
sigbaar en onsigbaar
die son, die maan
die skadu’s van die nag,
die dag en ons, ons is saam
anderkant verskynsels
anderkant die sigbare
in ‘n onbewoonde plek
waar daar niks is
behalwe die musiek van alleenheid 

article on the Orms website: Featured Customer: Johann du Plessis

Johann du Plessis, award-winning artist, popped into Orms Print Room & Framing to chat about his latest exhibition, “flash!-back(s)”.

Johann enters the Print Room and his charming, positive personality radiates through the atmosphere. It’s hard to believe that he is recently in remission from his grueling battle with cancer.

His latest body of work is a series of 30 mixed media works that document this entire experience; from the moment he was diagnosed, the three months thereafter that he spent waiting to find out about treatments, radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the side effects that accompanied these treatments and medications, and then, finally, the recovery. He basically had to start from scratch. All of his senses were affected. He had to learn how to walk again. He has memory lapses from that time, partly due to the trauma, partly as a result of the medication. It was a very dark period and process indeed.

http://www.ormsconnect.co.za/2014/04/featured-customer-johann-du-plessis/

The individual artworks are all the same height and are thus connected to form a unified larger panorama, which visually reveals his progression from the darkness into the light. But they function as separate pieces too. Their widths differ, each portraying various time lapses. The artworks consist of fragments of photographs that he took from the moment that he was first inspired after his ordeal, on a journey back from the KKNK in 2013. The weather was misty and gloomy and Johann snapped about 3500 photographs on the drive, from the morning into the night. These are collaged into horizontal and vertical planes, interspersed with painting and pencil drawings. “It’s a journey in space and time, allowing ideas to form meaning through different layers of reality”, Johann explains.

article on the AVA Gallery website

The award winning artist Johann du Plessis looks back at 2012 and 2013 with a series of 30 new mixed media works in his latest solo exhibition, “flash!-back(s)”. Du Plessis, who began to recover last year from a long and arduous battle with cancer, utilises photographs taken en route to Cape Town from last year’s Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, Oudtshoorn. The process of integration of these images with other mediums such as collage and drawing was a reaction to newfound hope and dignity as the effects of radiation and chemotherapy on body and soul gradually started to fade.

Du Plessis reworked and manipulated his images into an arresting series of vertical and horizontal panels. It is less of a documentation of specific places, and more of a process of reflection through remembering (pictures) and re-enacting (drawing and collage) an emotive journey through time and space. Visually, the panels have a strong meditative quality which flows smoothly through fragmented landscapes. Du Plessis describes these works as “reflections of moments in time and space, allowing ideas to form meaning through different layers of reality”.

 http://www.ava.co.za/flashbacks-a-solo-exhibition-of-new-work-by-johann-du-plessis-15-april-8-may-2014/ 

This is an email interview between Johann du Plessis and Mandy Conidaris, held in October 2014.

MC Johann, I’d like to start by discussing some of your earlier works*, as the works in the outoftheCUBE exhibition Room with a View seem to represent further steps along the same creative path. Aspects of this interview also stem from our conversation earlier this year.

In our conversation in August, you shared with me your journey through the diagnosis of cancer, waiting to have your treatment decided on, and then the debilitating processes of chemo- and radiation therapy and their impact on your body and soul. The artworks from your exhibition ‘flash!-back(s)’ in April of this year at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town explore the way you subsequently dealt with the trauma of those memories and with the rebuilding of your life after physical healing. These works, though, are not art therapy, but more an expressive response to your experiences. Could you share with us your view on the restorative power inherent in creative work?

JdP I find that the creative process takes me (and the viewer) beyond the visual, to reflection or self-reaction and in doing so to the condition and essence of humanity.

MC The ‘flash!back(s)’ images were not literal landscapes but composites, described* as a reworking and manipulation through a process of remembering and enacting. Although you spoke of an emotive journey, the images were captured during an actual physical journey from the Eastern to the Western Cape. Did the open spaces of the Karoo and the countryside you travelled through prompt you to start tapping into your emotions? Or were you already thinking about exploring your experiences in artwork? 

JdP I studied Architecture before I did my BA Fine Arts degree and this has always been a major influence in my artworks - calculated, pre-planned and controlled. I had therefore decided before the journey what I was going to do for the ‘flash!back(s)’ exhibition with the works being the last part of the healing process.

MC About those same works, you spoke also of a process of reflection - “reflections of moments in time and space, allowing ideas to form meaning through different layers of reality”. For me, the technical process you used, the panoramic layering of photographic imagery collaged with elements of drawing, could refer to a kind of metaphorical psychological space where disassociated fragments and images unexpectedly make their presence felt – in other words, these digital land-scapes could mirror the world of the mind/body-scape, where sudden flashes of memory reinforce and reaffirm the impact that your experiences had on you. Would you mind commenting on my response to this aspect of your work?

JdP The works became a catalyst for my ‘journey’ / ‘recollections’ of 2012/13 – a world filled with horror, hallucinations and the battle and hope to ‘engage’ again with the outside world leading towards safety and normality.

MC Moving on to Room with a View, these images have a much more intimate source – instead of from the vastness of the land, the photographs were taken of the night sky from the balcony of your home in Mouille Point, Cape Town. You described this act of artmaking as an attempt to rehumanise your environment after these experiences, to “raise the white flag towards safety”. With the common association of the white flag being the notion of surrender, could you elaborate a little on this evocative statement? 

JdP In a contemporary world where global issues and disasters have become international ‘symbols’, I attempt to show in the works for the Room with a View exhibition that mysticism, peacefulness, silence, the ‘non-obvious’, the ‘unseen’, the night, the cosmic, the universe and the search for the Ultimate Beauty can all contribute to ‘raising the white flag’.

MC Gamwell says “The skies of the Romantic landscape offered the perfect place to synthesize science and the spiritual.” Knowing that you were behind the camera and viewing the night sky in a meditative state, it seems as though you were doing just that – looking at your physical medical experiences and trying to integrate them with your own understanding of the metaphysical world. Could you comment on that? 

JdP In creating artworks we can ‘speak’ about the unspeakable which deals with emotions, the ‘experiencing’ of that which is seen as ‘illogical’ or ‘weightless’. My works deal with how I relate to the relativity of human life; how I (and the viewer) try to humanize the surroundings to become more reassuring and thus giving us self-assurance, comfort and logic. These works reflect moments in time and space, or rather through time and space – letting go of the ‘now’, allowing ideas to form meaning through different layers of reality – an interplay between the passing and dissolving of time.

MC Similarly, the poem you present in your artist’s statement speaks of contrasting states of being – a “double” world - where each state has equal though opposite significance and because of this, each is in a relationship with the other. Regarding your imagery, there is almost a sense of ‘standing within and gazing out’. As we have said, the subject matter has been captured from your living space, and then during your digital manipulation of the image, the night skies begin to mimic astrological mapping, the universe. Would you say that this reflects another aspect of your double world – the intimate and the cosmic?

JdP The reworked and manipulated images are less of a documentation of a specific place and more of a process of reflection through remembering (photographs) and re-enacting (drawing and collage) – an emotive journey through time and space.

MC In terms again of opposite states, I’m reminded of piece of writing by Diarmuid O’Murchu who explores the notion of quantum relationships: “it is suggested that observation gives way to relationship, a complex mode of interacting, fluctuating until a sense of resonance emerges, whereby the individual parts – giver and receiver, observer and observed – lose their dualistic, independent identities, but rediscover [an] … interdependent relationship of the new whole.” I wonder if this has any relevance for you in relation to your artwork?

JdP Visually, the works have a meditative quality which flows smoothly throughout the series. The artworks are conceptual, leaning towards abstraction, ‘speaking’ of the unspeakable, dealing with the emotive, the ‘experiencing’ of that which can be ‘seen’ as ‘illogical’ or ‘weightless.’

MC On a more technical level, you have decided to show the white borders to make it clear to the viewer that they are photographs – what prompted this decision?

JdP I decided to have white borders to make the works appear more ambiguous, ‘fooling the viewer’s eye’ / ‘trompe l’oeil.’

MC Finally, I saw these images on Facebook and approached you to exhibit them on outoftheCUBE. That represents a shift from the act of taking the photos in your own living space prompted by introspection, to placing them on the Internet in an online exhibition, with the relatively intimate and supportive bridge of your Facebook page. Could you speak a little about your view on the pros and cons of viewing art online? 

JdP I really like the idea of a virtual, online exhibition - it makes the work more accessible to a far wider audience, avoiding high expenses of transportation, insurance, framing etc.

Thanks Johann!

SOURCES

*(see gallery discussion and images on http://www.ava.co.za/flashbacks-a-solo-exhibition-of-new-work-by-johann-du-plessis-15-april-8-may-2014/ )

Gamwell, Lynn. 2002. Exploring the invisible: art, science and the spiritual. Princetown University Press: New Jersey.

O’Murchu, Diarmuid. 2004. Quantum Theology: spiritual implications of the new physics. The Crossroad Publishing Company: New York. 

.: Catalogue - Johann du Plessis (55kB)