Strauss & co - Wits Art Museum

WITS ARTS MUSEUM ENDOWMENT AUCTION 37 24 Karel Nel (b.1955) Forest Pulse, from Elegies to the Forest series Pastel and charcoal on Ficus Ficus bark cloth 180 x 70 cm 2005 Donated by the artist R60 000 – 80 000 Karel Nel is one of South Africa’s most prominent contemporary artists. He currently has work on a Smithsonian Institution exhibition, African Cosmos: Stellar Arts, which is travelling in the USA. Nel’s work is often concerned with very large issues, from the disappearance of rain forests to questions of cosmic relationships of our planet to the galaxy. This is reflected not only in the subject matter of his apparently abstract, large works, but also in the materials used. In this work, which has been exhibited in London and Johannesburg, a support of Tanzanian bark- cloth from the tree Ficus Ficus is overlaid with charcoal and pastel in a dense network of lines. In the middle, a blank shape connotes a lost presence by absence, a pulse in the continuity of the forest. This negative shape is made evident because it is not traversed by the lines that cover the rest, and it interrupts their communication.  AN