Reaching new frontiers 2008

Commissioned for a major national art award where it took first prize, this installation meditates on the relationship between artists, commerce, and corporate patronage. The project responds to a challenge set by sponsor Sasol, a global company specializing in synthetic waxes derived from Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technologies, asking artists to engage directly with wax.

In Reaching New Frontiers, I focus on wax in its raw state before it is refined into consumer products like candles and cosmetics. The work connects natural and synthetic forms through the parallel imagery of the beehive and the Sasol logo. A central cube of stacked wax slabs highlights wax as a fundamental commodity that drives the circulation of labor and capital.

The cell-like structure evokes contrasting metaphors: the confinement of an office cubicle and the quiet solitude of a monastic cell. By inviting viewers to physically navigate the space, the installation encourages critical reflection on the bond between art and industry.

Interview with Wilhelm van Rensburg for the catalogue, 2008

Wilhelm van Rensburg: Explain the relationship between art and industry that forms the conceptual basis of your installation.

Hentie van der Merwe: An exploration of the relationship between art and industry is not only interesting in itself, but by no means alien to the history of art. One can think of countless examples wherein artists have explored such a relationship in their art. A theme which, framed in its broadest possible sense, relates to the relationship between the metaphysical (art) and the material (industrial) world. One of the earliest examples known to us of an artwork in which such a relationship between art and industry is explored at length is Virgil’s Georgics, a poem in which a strong sense of the necessity and dignity of labour breathes from beginning to end. However, labour is portrayed in relation to both success and failure – failure, before the resurgent forces of the natural world, and success, which is tainted by spiritual failure; thus the relationship between the metaphysical and the material (as depicted by Virgil) seems to be continuously in strife and flux.

A second conceptual strand in your installation pursues the relationship between artist and patron. How is this notion embodied in the work?

The work is conceived as at once a celebration of both patron and artist/the creative process, while at the same time attempting to reflect on the current nature of such an alliance. In terms of celebrating this relationship, I have decided to employ the Sasol logo as one leitmotif in the work. In terms of reflecting on the relationship between artist and patron, or, on a more practical level, on a productive outcome (in a material sense) of the relationship between art and industry, it is important to consider the idea of corporate sponsorship, particularly in a country such as South Africa where government support of the arts is limited. As a result artists find themselves in the company of patrons from the corporate world, thus coming face-to-face with a world from which they would usually dissociate themselves from or from which they would feel alienated – a world of factories, multinationals, branding, and, of course, sponsorship as a promotional tool of marketing. Art becomes a willing accomplice of this system as a means of assuring its own existence and realizing its goals – a system which is arguably one of the most powerful in the world today.

One of the strongest points you seem to be making in and through your work is that capitalism is buying an object, which provides provocation or satisfaction of a kind corporations choose to subsidize and encourage. Elaborate on this stance.

Corporations realize increasingly that customers have become somewhat immune to the usual suite of advertising techniques, and are now attempting, through branding, not so much to sell goods or services, but to buy, ironically, or accumulate, cultural capital by means of corporate sponsorship for the arts. Corporations wish to elevate themselves by association with that which they cannot embody, including the free play of high art. As the now notorious Phillip Morris slogan says: 'It takes art to make a company great'.

The idea of branding in the form of a logo is significant in your art. The Sasol-logo wallpaper is redolent of a type of camouflage, very successfully employed in your previous artistic output. In what way is this installation related to your previous work?

In my most recent exhibition at Goodman Gallery I used camouflage printed cloth to construct flags and uniform-like three-dimensional shapes. In an earlier show I used gingham print to 'camouflage' objects on a wall, by wallpapering a whole room, and by fashioning an army uniform out of the gingham print. Camouflaging is, of course, an age-old form of visual subterfuge in the natural world, animals using colours and patterns to conceal and protect themselves. Camouflaging became a keen military priority in the early twentieth century with the advent of modern-day warfare. Drawing on old hunting traditions, camouflaging became a strategic form of maneuver to win the battle. Nowadays camouflage print has become a universal style icon, used for all sorts of clothing and other forms of merchandise.

Branding, a contemporary form of camouflage, has become an economic enterprise buying cultural capital for the corporation.