Pretoria based artist Selwyn Steyn, winner of the Emerging Artist Development Programme with his Memetic Sculpture: A Speculation on Cultural Contagion (2020), stained meranti-wood, galvanised steel bolts, aluminium wire, paint, has been commissioned to create a new work in the form of a QR code for this exhibition. This work, entitled Datum (2021) in the same shape and format of that of the sculptures in The Blind Alphabet, will serve as the point of entry from where a newly developed application can be downloaded to both Android and Apple devices.
Selwyn Steyn (born 1997) completed his undergraduate degree in architecture in 2019, ending as the top design student and winner of the Pretoria Institute of Architecture design award in his year. His passion and focus, however, has always been conceptual art. Hence he has spent most of his life nurturing his artistic practice in the hopes of pursuing a career in visual art from the departure point of a knowledge base grounded in spatiality and place-making.
Selwyn finds parallels between spatial theory and visual culture whilst navigating multiple mediums in his pursuit of grappling with interpretations of our individual and collective understandings of psyche, identity, perception and ideology, within the context of South Africa. Selwyn has exhibited at the ABSA gallery with BKHZ, Turbine Art Fair with RMB Talent Unlocked, No End Contemporary, UJ Art Museum, and the National Arts Festival. He has been a finalist in multiple competitions including Thami Mnyele Fine Art Awards, PPC Imaginarium, UJ Continuing Conversations and most recently the 30th installment of Sasol New Signatures. To read more about him, click HERE.
The Memetic Sculpture: a speculation on cultural contagion (2020)
Timber, galvanised steel bolts, aluminium wire, paint
50 x 50 x 60 cm
and
Datum (2021)
Timber
75 x 35 x 35 cm
