Images by: Khahliso Matela
Sculptures at JAG
On Sculptures
The stillness in bone, metal or wood seems to arrest a mind
more intimately when seen transformed into sculptures that resemble immortal
humanity. And when recalling some philosopher impugning that ‘beauty arrests’
the mind or the perceptive faculty in man, I feel the urge to touch the frozen
monuments as though caressing past moments vaulted in a projection I alone can
decipher. Stillness seems cold and sterile, but within these is entombed the
warmest hours of toil in the chiseling beauty. The artist’s fingers and eyes seem
to be blotting sacraments on an inanimate object, and what ultimate alchemy,
breathing life into a stone. And what metaphor is this about the birth of the
sexes, in these stases that are the divine eye’s pleasure? Do the complementary
man and woman figures in the human incarnation resemble a semblance of some
divine dichotomy that requires re-assembling? Do these become the sole
aspirations of souls, me and her together in a silence of acquiescence?
