Conradie Christiaan (South Africa)

Painting

Mixed techniques

House

If there's another time, I'll do...

What shall we do with your bones

I'll be old someday and what can...

We will live forever, or die by...

I've been hit by cherry blossoms...

We travel at night all crooked and...

Take the gift of this hour

Even as you watch I'm fleeing

Black sky punched holes in...

The wind knows my tale, she was...

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Christiaan Conradie experiences and focuses on concrete spheres within the arts. He draws insiration from the age-old pictoral techniques of Rubens and Rembrandt, to the abstraction of Cy Twomby and of conceptual art. He proposes, therefore, an interesting diversity and multiplicity in his pieces, but whose identity and authenticity is clear and defined.There is no other Conradie. Inspired by the loose, fast and dynamic brushstrokes of Rubens, he picks up on the carnal and dionysian exuberance of the bodies, the paint an ode to the human body. In addition, he is inspired by the capturing of living bodies in solitude and complete isolation as demonstrated in the works of Rembrandt. An isolation that breaks with the emerging world of his time. Conradie uses this device, in some way, to create an intimate space of reflection, in front of the complexities that inhabit this world, his figures are presented alone, isolated, intimate and alive. Evident too, are echoes from the works of Twombly in the way that multiple layers and textures are imposed one on top of the other, a type of caligraphic, covert staining of the working surface.

In so doing, Conradie establishes a concrete dialogue between his favourite artists and appropriates those aspects which serve as a support from which to generate his pieces. Conradie considers his work as a space in which he is able to achieve a communion between the diversly dichotomous aspects of life. In this way, he invites an extreme and intimate comtemplation of the characters that appear in his works of art, executed with precision and patience, demonstrating the rational and measured aspect of the artists’ work. He paints these figures in silent and inmoveable spaces, that invite reflection. But at the same time, these figures painted with impactful realism, appear dismembered, incomplete, textured and sensitively rendered. In this way, he demonstrates the limits of the body and its weaknesses. He searches for, paints, and re-creates certain personalities that embody time, carnal, a body that expresses, an abject body, fragmented, desmembered. His subjects are infinite beings. Themes of ageing and of death are addressed. He plays with the (a)temporality of his work, they are never contextualised within a specific time or space.

However, time is ‘felt’, it weighs. It weighs with it’s body and skin, and with its objects, and lives with its colours and its textures. Conradie imagines the objective of what he wants to achieve, and doesn’t rest until he finds the materials neccessary in order for him to generate the emotions that he aims to awaken. His art is conceived as though it were a bridge, that unites two worlds that at first, seem contrary, but which in communion reveal a vitality. Reason and sensitivity. Formally he uses oil, watercolour, objects and lights amongst other materials. Devices that allow him to transit between the two worlds, the rational and the intuitive. In this space, between these two concepts, is where Christiaan’s creation is concentrated. He surrounds his subjects with a very particular aesthetic. The paint, with its plasticity, with its textures, its uncertain forms, its irregularities, its intensity, breaks free from the linear rational world, transporting one to the world of emotions. His paintings are full of dichotomous spaces.

Aged subjects, with folkloric components, serenity and violence, order and chaos, rationality and insanity, hope and despair. Christiaan wages in this game of contradictions, and in it a vitality is borne through the conjunction of both approaches. This vitality derived from his work is accompanied by a majestic and authentic aesthetic impact. Currently, Christiaan finds himself working on a series of works inspired by his recent prolonged stay in Mexico. After having lived there for a little over three years, he is in the midst of working through this confrontation of multiple realities. Mexico has captured his imagination aesthetically as much as it has emotionally. Mexico, to his artistic sensibilities emerges as a space both floral and bloody, spiritual and of the earth. His current proposal is to re-signify the symbols, fragments and sensations, of this journey and to adapt them in his pieces. Mexico has spontaneously and intuitively integrated itself into his work. The subjects present in his paintings cohabit with this new expression where a potent aesthetic flourishes.

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