Part 1 of 225/8
Kyle Morland
Artwork 2015
Artwork: Kyle Morland, Part 1 of 225/8 (2015). NS4 primer on rock paper. 61 x 40 cm. Private collection.
Artist Kyle Morland Title Part 1 of 225/8 Date 2015 Materials NS4 primer on rock paper Dimensions 61 x 40 cm Credit Private collection

b.1986, Johannesburg

Working to obscure self-imposed rules, Kyle Morland assembles his sculptures with a studied exactitude. While minimalism and formalism perhaps best describe his spatial compositions, such words reveal little of the works’ interior logic. Indeed, few of Morland’s sculptures are purely abstract, most are functionless studies of more functional forms. Made with the precision of an engineer, his sculptures often appear as misplaced industrial parts, reminiscent of air conditioning ducts, metal piping and steel sub-structures. Construction supplies are his medium of choice; from mild steel sheeting to commercial paint. But to his hard-edged, mass-produced aesthetic Morland adds moments of material grace. Cloth, cardboard, masking tape – those things moveable and provisional offer a compelling counterpoint to the artist’s unbending metal forms. “Offsetting his industrial banality,” critic Felix Kawitzky wrote, “is some kind of small yearning which hangs around the sculptures – some hope of escape from the unyielding demands of their ‘formal properties’.” 

Cut across
Lucienne Bestall

Arranged alongside one another, four artworks from A4's Archive offer reflections on dividing lines. – June 7, 2024

Path page
Cut across
Lucienne Bestall
Arranged alongside one another, four artworks from A4’s Archive offer reflections on dividing lines. – June 7, 2024
Path page

Begin with bare equivalences –

Four works: all monotone, all cleaved by a line.

First impulse –

A landscape by David Goldblatt divided, as the genre demands, by the horizon into complementary halves.

(Being unframed, the photograph cannot be included. It remains present as a note tacked to the wall, beyond the limits of the blue tape.)

First artwork –

Almost landscape, almost portrait. A photograph halved by eclipsing white. The chromatic composition of Sabelo Mlangeni’s image echoes Goldblatt’s, yet the line, rather than describing the topology of a given place, serves only to obscure it.
Sabelo Mlangeni's monochrome photographic print 'A morning after (UmlindeloUmlindelo wamaKholwa)' shows two individuals standing on the ground.

Similarly obscured –

The material nature of Kyle Morland’s work, first mistaken as a photograph by Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo, as an indexical image of a worn surface.

Another impulse –

To include such a photograph; to follow the error.

(Also unframed, this photograph joins Goldblatt’s on the far side of the blue tape.)

In truth –

Morland's work is a rubbing made of the unseen facets of a steel sculpture; a notation of what is otherwise invisible. The seam that runs across the darkness describes the intersections of different planes.

Then –

Another unseen space, twice divided by shadows. This, too, by Goldblatt. Like Hlatshwayo's photograph, emphasis is given to the texture of time as it is transcribed on surfaces. The chromatic composition inverts that of the landscape, further resisting easy simile with its two dividing lines.

Lastly –

A fabric assemblage by Gerda Scheepers recalls Mlangeni’s image in composition and concealment.

In the lower half of the work, which appears all incidental mark-making and abstraction, is an impression of a landscape arranged vertically.

The title of the work, Pondoland Pocket, ties the image to a place, inviting comparison with Goldblatt’s photograph of the Karoo.
Header
Close
Text