Johann Louw

Johann Louw is an introverted artist based in Cape Town. Johann Louw prefers not to speak, but to rather observe and communicate with the world using his images as an intermediary. Johann Louw does most of his work in oils on canvas although the prints that he made at The Artists' Press mirror the conceptual concerns of his paintings. Anonymous male figures occupy anonymous institutional like spaces, the figures are static and tense and become abstract in relationship to the negative space around them. In some of the images the presence of a second figure is suggested by the use of shadow. Who does this shadow belong to? Is it yours, the viewer, or that of the artists? Or of some unknown person who can only inhabit your imagination. The suggestion is powerful.

The colours and tones that he uses are muted and restricted in range, adding to sense of psychological tension that he so masterfully creates.

Hands are excluded from the frame of the image and the faces look past one or away from the viewer. The poses are intimate and at the same time reject sympathy, bringing into question relationships of power and control. Intrigue and menace are suggested. By leaving the work untitled the viewer is left to respond directly to the figures and the work on an emotional level without a conscious interpretation of the work.

Johann Louw worked intensely on these images, often preferring the empty quite of the studio space at night. His working and re-working of the surfaces and careful selection of colour and control of line have resulted in prints that are very "printerly" and deceptively simple in their style and execution. Johann Louw was born in 1965. He completed his Fine Art Degree at the University of Stellenbosch and has won a number of awards during his studies :The Rolfes Student Art, Merit Award, Durban, and The Volkskas Atelier, Merit Award in Pretoria. Johann Louw was awarded a HSRC Bursary for postgraduate study and in 1992 received his Masters Degree in Fine Arts, cum laude. Between 1992 and 1997 was a part time lecturer in painting at The University of Stellenbosch and at The Foundation School of Art in Cape Town. He has exhibited extensively in group shows and at one-man shows throughout South Africa and in Germany, Australia and the USA

COLLECTIONS - National and Corporate
South African National Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Gauteng, Durban Tatham Gallery, Durban, Sasol Art Collection, Stellenbosch, Pepkor, Nasionale Pers, Cape Town, De Kock & Kerkhoff, Barclays plc, Sanlam, Old Mutual, London, Johannesburg Stock Exchange, ABSA Bank Ltd, Cazenove, SA, J P Morgan Ltd Bochum Kunsthalle, Germany, University of Cape Town Collection, Johann C Porer Collection on loan to UCT, Oppenheimer Library.

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Other artists represented by ArtPrintSA

Lithographs, 2006