Solo Exhibition
2 September - 27 October 2012

Exhibition Opening: Sunday 2 September 2012
Exhibition Closure: Saturday 27 October 2012 Share Facebook Twitter

WHATIFTHEWORLD is pleased to present These Waves, a solo exhibition by Pierre Fouché.

The works in These Waves take as their impetus the torrents of time and desire, a heightened awareness of mortality, and early modern experiments with optics and capturing the transience of light, weather and human consciousness:

A lace portrait pieced together using a domestic sewing machine – of an octogenarian gay man sitting in the artist’s favourite chair (Your Young Voice – A Portrait of Ivan Katzen) contrasted with a series of voyeuristic and intimate pencil drawings of seemingly solitary young men in domestic surrounds (And the walls came tumbling down).

A ‘traditional’ bobbin lace edging with the story of a sailor’s seduction and drowning encoded in the pattern (His foam-white arms go over and round me) is paired with an imaginary portrait of two Iranian youths, carefree and happy, as if their arrest and execution never occurred (Mahmoud & Ayaz).

Interspersed throughout the exhibition are pieces from a series of plein-air watercolour seascapes– each painted on a Sunday on a different Atlantic seaboard beach (Cyan Sundays) These ‘little watercolours’ are inspired by Virginia Woolf’s third-person descriptions of a coastal scene in the interludes between the character-driven chapters of her most experimental novel, The Waves (1931).

The Artist’s amateur status in many of the techniques employed, as well as the marginality of some of the techniques within contemporary art (watercolour seascapes, photorealistic pencil-drawings), is analogous to the works’ ultimate status as originating from – and engaging with – the psyche of non-normative sexuality.

Fouché’s work engages with portraiture, the languorous gaze, domestic photography, and how these intersect with desire. His employment of these broad categories constitutes an example of the subtle and poetic side of queer representation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1977, Pretoria, South Africa. Pierre Fouché graduated in 2006 with an MA in Fine Art (cum laude) from Stellenbosch University. Following his masters degree he went on to win the prestigious ABSA Atiler art award and spent time in Paris as a resident artist at the Cité Internationale des Arts in 2008.

He has participated in numerous group exhibitions,among them Trading Freedoms, University of London 2011, 1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective, Iziko South African National Gallery: Cape Town 2010, and A Legacy of Men, Johannesburg Art Gallery: Johannesburg 2007. He work was recently represented at the Volta art fair in Basel Switzerland and has been placed in numerous private collections.

Pierre Fouché Lives and works in Cape Town. These Waves is his fourth Solo exhibition