Christiaan Conradie and the representation of the existential burden through the elderly.

by Laura Vailati 17 August 2020 2199 Views

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I have always been attracted by the representation of realistic alternative beauty made up of elderly people, disproportionate bodies or eccentric people, the so-called “strange”, so far from the canonical representation of ideal beauty. The art of Christiaan Conradie, who sees the elderly as the protagonists of his works, fascinated me because of this. An artist originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Christiaan Conradie was a member of the RVCA’s Artist Network Program (ANP). The program aims to highlight the talent of artists, both established and unknown, who can inspire the current generation, pushing the boundaries of creativity and providing them with added value, in terms of substance and culture.

As a child he moved with his family to Cape Town where he fell in love with the ocean and grew up surfing. Surfing, the ocean and water but also music and admiration for creative excellence are some of the components that play a fundamental role in his artistic compositions. Conradie began painting at the age of 19 and, although he began his studies in Art Direction and Design, only two years after entering the advertising world, he left everything to devote himself exclusively to painting. He claims that travel has played a fundamental role in his artistic research and for this reason he has traveled and continues to travel a lot: he lived in Barcelona, he moved to various countries in Latin America where he decided to stay for a while. He currently lives and works in Mexico City driven by his love for Mexico and the wealth that the country offers in artistic terms, but also by the desire to refine the Spanish language.

In his process of learning about painting, his mentor, Julia Teale, played a fundamental role, and he recognises that she has a great deal of duty in the philosophy of making art. Christiaan Conradie believes that drawing skills are immensely important in the study of art, because only by learning the basics of drawing is it possible to explore and experience everything else. In his artistic expression he confesses that he was inspired by the greats of art history: from Rembrandt, to Rubens’ loose, fast and dynamic brushstrokes to Cy Twombly’s conceptual and abstract art. Conradie’s artistic process is based on an idea or inspiration from which he starts out to create the image that then “lets it live its own life”. Often to represent his concept of artistic creation Conradie refers to CPR: cardiopulmonary resuscitation done on people: “…the moment I feel like I’ve created a piece, I let it live alone,” says the artist.

In Conradie’s work, there is a continuous exchange of information between him and the subject represented, of which he tries to capture the weight of the existence of life understood as an existential burden whose burden is evident especially in old age. “Being people is a factor that unites us”, says the artist, who represents “people”, mainly elderly men “lightened” in their existence on the canvas by a mostly flat and monochrome background that represents water and fluidity in his being that lightens the weight to carry. The sense of water present or imminent is also rendered symbolically through the representation of lightning, clouds or points of colour representing rain or in the flow of a river of flowers.

As an accompaniment to these absolutely realistic characters in the figurative representation, the artist adds other media, “positive vibrations”, thanks to the use of the colors of the various materials used, ranging from different media to the representation of the subject, plastic balls or scraps of fabric. Not indifferent is also the use that makes of the title of the work: a sort of concise phrase containing all the elements necessary to frame the scene. The artist with his work invites the viewer to participate emotionally by confronting the disproportion and decomposition, provoking him and leading him to complete what is presented to him as a suggestion, a fragment. It is only through the viewer’s gaze that the work reaches its climax.

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