Contracted Land II

"My journey begins with a trip from Johannesburg to the Vaal dam in the Free State.
A copper plate holds the first gestural marks, which loosely map out key elements of the trip.
The plate is developed until all elements of this trip are laid out; endless planes perpetually deconstructed and fragments overlaid until the whole journey exists in a singular image.
The process prints join me as a travel to the island of Sylt, Germany.
On this remote wintery island, those first marks no longer speak of the previous journey, but become a framework for my current view.
Contracted Land attempts to draw a link between a section of a journey done in South Africa from memory, and a current and quite opposite moment whilst on a residency in Sylt" (De Wet, 2019).

His journey starts in 2015 and ends in 2016, where he engages constantly with his environment, and starts exploring the position of the body within its landscape. He continues to explore fragmentation and reconstruction of materials, and begins to incorporate these fragmentations within the same compositions. The limitations and boundaries of the material and medium are being tested and and explored. The landscape becomes more and more abstracted, fragmented and dream-like as he builds the series Last Night (2015-2016). Note the recurring circle in the composition, as a landscape image, one might assume that this represents the sun on the horizon, but the viewer cannot ignore the fact that this goes paired with other geometric compositional elements.