Processing Decay

A Happy Art: Processing Decay

‘Processing Decay’ has an appealing ring to it for a title of a piece about one of Johannesburg’s prolific art practitioners, whose work has received international admiration and thus, extensive exhibition – whom yet remains an enigma whose art practices range from poetry performances to action painting. In an article published on ART.co.za, Dhlame states that his work serves to ‘formulates new utopias about our surrounding spaces as well as unmasking existing codes and conditions in art’. And this statement resonates well with new approaches to viewing beauty in a world where ideas of the ‘natural’ are rapidly losing validity.
 

My scrutiny begins with the artist’s series of UNTITLED artworks; a compendium of severely clinical representations of decaying walls and peeling paint, where I am of the impression that he managed to convert abstraction from ‘a possibility of chance’ to a ‘necessity’ of the process of decay, a concrete realization of FORM in decay. Arguably abstractions can stand above social and political realities and even ecological, but if the abstraction is a reality in-itself, therefore these walls, surfaces and canvases wounded by time become a real chronicle of time’s passage.
 

The act of refabricating the patterns of decay and decomposition appears to be the art work itself, as opposed to the abstractions on actual walls and other surfaces, but rather pointing to the underlying cause of the gradual decay of all things physical. In an “An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay”, Dhlame’s depictions of the process of ruin become an art that does not copy life (and decay) and nature, but rather constitutes its own world reality independent of the source reality stencilled by time on every object in physical reality. So, his works are not realist in essential attempts of mimicry of natural phenomena, but a redefinition thereof, not to be judged by any external standard of resemblances.

There also radiates an energy obsessed with the complexity of shapes and forms created by ruination suggesting the artist’s deeper understanding and comprehensive evaluation of objects selected for his art. Attracted by abjection, fascinated by the way in which dying things can change their appearance before Dhlame’s eyes, through these pieces, the processes of decay become not something to be eschewed but to be harnessed, repackaged and given a new nature.

The art of decay should not, however be confused with decay itself, even most materials utilised for the various compositions are fragile and degradable. Cloths, paint, paper, plastic are all perishable items of choice for the artist, which also highlights the plurality of processes of decay as phenomena that occur within space/time. Decay, being visual symbol of our present anxieties, offers lessons about the inevitable fall of overblown civilizations and the ultimate power of nature. And by focusing on the act of painting, Dhlame is able to freeze time of these processes while simultaneously certifying their existence in the natural world.

Therefore these images become a reminder of the ‘abandoned’, providing a frozen rehabilitation of disorder on the cracked walls, yielding a terrible beauty that the artist defines as a methodology structured to ‘capture the after effect, in a measured time, in a specific building. It compels the viewer to look afresh at the surroundings and to ask what do these structures signify; what convictions; what hopes and fears went into the buildings’. But as Oscar Wilde had once claimed, that “Art never expresses anything but itself”, would this statement seem fitting a motif for Dhlame’s focal structural themes that revolve around processes which are in themselves transitory? 

Photographs are courtesy of the artist.