In a solo exhibition rich in metaphor, Guy Simpson offers an artistic look at the suburbs of Johannesburg. Until October 2, the Everard Read gallery in Cape Town presents “Jacaranda”, an exhibition featuring walls of varying visuals. Cracks, rust, discoloration, scales and collapses reveal the transitory state of these storied barriers, movingly evoking human fragility and the ineluctable cycle of life.
Born in Johannesburg in 1994, Guy Simpson is a South African visual artist and co-founder of Under Projects. Based in Cape Town, he shapes his artistic practice through a variety of media, including sculpture, painting and drawing. He draws his inspiration mainly from childhood memories, domestic materials and everyday objects, which he uses as reference points to revisit his past and understand its evolution. Guy Simpson’s artistic approach revolves around a variety of themes, all of which reflect a relentless quest for truth and simplicity. The central interest of his work lies in his profound exploration of the grandeur of life in motion, in search of small truths.
In “Jacaranda”, Guy Simpson fully embraces his approach to exploratory art, venturing into a multitude of transformations through the traditional techniques of painting on canvas. With meticulous precision, the South African artist manages to reproduce visuals that evoke the walls of the historic districts of his hometown, Orange Grove in Sydenham. He creates his works from unstretched canvas, carefully superimposing, fragmenting and gluing each element before applying the paint. These walls, created with great devotion, seek to reflect reality, inspired by images gleaned from Google Street View.
However, Guy Simpson emphasizes that through his new body of work, these walls, while true to their essence, are not frozen as they were captured. They already bear the marks of change, being perceived on the Internet as mere ephemeral memories, memorized until they are inevitably replaced by other images. Ultimately, these works represent fleeting moments in the tumultuous flow of time.
The exhibition’s eponymous work, Jacaranda, takes the form of a delicate installation of purple jacaranda flowers, each carefully cut and hand-painted, which carpet the floor of the Everard Read gallery. These petals are highly symbolic, encouraging visitors to immerse themselves in the world of the Johannesburg suburbs. At the same time, the work invites the public to contemplate the fragile beauty of the walls, like the jacaranda flowers that litter the city’s streets in spring.
The pieces in the “Jacaranda” exhibition, each in their own way, offer a poignant visual interpretation of the emotional depth that walls can embody through their stories. Like silent witnesses, these walls reveal hidden shreds of experience, emerging through cracks and disparate layers. In Crack , for example, the motif of an old tablecloth emerges through the layered canvas, revealing a personal history that runs deep into the substrate of the walls. This creation by the South African artist illustrates how each crack can bear witness to an intimate and collective narrative, combining memory and transformation. “It is only in ruined walls that we can see the stories and lives that have crossed their borders,” says Guy Simpson.
