Chris Soal
Born 1994. Johannesburg, South Africa.
Lives and works: Cape Town, South Africa.
LOTE: French, Italian.
About
Soal’s studio-based practice is sculptural in its output, working with objects and materials in ways which show not only a conceptual engagement with the contexts and histories of the objects, but that also re-enforce the body as a site for knowledge reception and production. Soal’s works seek to make a poetic statement through the simplest of means, engaging the viewer’s spatial awareness and perceptual habits while challenging core societal preconceptions of value and hierarchy.
Through his use of discarded and mundane ephemera, such as toothpicks and bottle caps, along with concrete, rebar, electric fencing cable, sandpaper and other industrial materials, the artist intuitively develops the familiar to the point of the uncanny. Soal’s works can be considered as a social abstraction that is deeply rooted in, and reflective of, having grown up in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Working symbiotically with his materials, Soal utilises the inherent physical characteristics of the objects to transform them through processes of aggregation, combination and erosion to interrogate views of nature and culture as a binary concept – seeking to foreground pressing ecological concerns by repositioning the viewer as an active agent within the contemporary environment. Despite the artificiality of his materials, Soal’s process allows the materials to take on biomorphic qualities or evoke natural phenomena, expressing his interest in the phenomenological quality of the materials.
Artist Statement
The Hand That Was Dealt Us addresses the relationship between ubiquitous objects and the body-as-object. Using birch and bamboo wood toothpicks, a recognisable everyday tool, the work has transformed a familiar unit into an unfamiliar mass. These simple, everyday objects are re-presented unadorned, yet gathered together in such a way as to lure the viewer in to believing they are looking at a soft and inviting organic form. The abject nature of toothpicks – their proximity to our mouths and the passing of them between hands – is what pushes these phenomenological forms into a poetic, relational realm.
A wandering work, evoking movement from these still-static objects, and creating wonder when closely inspected and the material is finally recognised. One feels compelled to touch these forms, but is also repelled by their abstracted yet familiar nature. They are bodily forms, visually referencing organic forms such as fur, skins and coral, while sitting outside a singular reading. The title of the work is a statement positing a response in the viewer; are we left to accept the inevitable, are we simply at the mercy of fate, and a helpless individual drop in a vast ocean of events beyond our control? Or can our individual and collective agency and ability to transform the world around us create new outcomes?
Acknowledgements & Collaborators
Represented by WHAT IF THE WORLD, Cape Town, South Africa.
Loan of work courtesy: Collection Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), Hobart.
#chrissoal #southafricanartist
Exhibiting at
John Curtin Gallery
JCG is one of WA's foremost public art galleries and curates the Curtin University Art Collection, located at Curtin's Bentley campus.
Address
Curtin University, Building 200A, Kent St, Bentley WA 6102