Apparatus

Apparatus presented by the University of Texas at San Antonio

Dylan Collins Andries Fourie Donald Henson Curated by Scott A. Sherer, PhD

March 5 - 22, 2009

Apparatus Morning response to the alarm clock, a yawn and a stretch, and then feet on a cold floor are daily reminders that our bodies perform mundane functions but are also repositories of memory and thought. We live in varied consequences of our genetic and cultural histories as well as the realities and fantasies of health, family, and social engagement – and, of course, our imaginations and dreams.

Our embodied experience is paradoxical: our bodies are vehicles for pleasure and pain, and they are our strength as well as our vulnerability. While we may not be threatened with the kind of fast obsolescence that accompanies a newer product’s rollout, we sometimes have no warning that our bodies will fail, and we surely cannot always count on repairs and replacement parts. The human body is a living-action machine.

Beyond an individual’s personal circumstances, human bodies are subject to a variety of social and cultural discourses. Apparatus brings together three artists – Dylan Collins, Andries Fourie, and Donald Henson – who explore dichotomies between natural mysteries and scientific analyses, correspondences between organic and mechanical structures, relationships between human animals and other life forms, and associations between lived experience and fantasy. Using a variety of traditional and modern/industrial methods and materials, these artists combine

conceptual and physical properties in remarkable devices.

Their sculptures have a physical presence, suggesting specific processes and purposes, but they also inspire a productive uncertainty and creative interpretation of what a machine accomplishes and of how we engage with them and accomplish specific tasks.

Andries Fourie produces complex objects that reference the cultural dynamics of South Africa. His work incorporates the sculptural and graphic character of a hybrid culture and offers critique in a postmodern/ postcolonial world. Fourie incorporates found objects and references to South African taxi culture, west African barbershop signs, township music and tsotsitaal (the active composite languages of multi-lingual

South Africa), and the wire toy cars that local children make and enjoy.

Growing up with apartheid restrictions, Fourie integrates history and fantasy for new interpretations. He creates works that integrate cultural phenomena with critique of the impact of social structures on individual subjectivity. In Nostalgia II, anatomical diagrams, perhaps once used for racist

constructions, intersect with the potential of a divining rod and the free spirit of a bird in flight. Larger-scale constructions are mobile machines that carry narrative potential and invite viewer’s dialogue. Keeping madam satisfied and For the pleasure of the queen make use of screenprint techniques that are referents to images that linger in our psyches, and their mobile constructions seem to be able to transfer elements from one thought and location to another. Fourie’s works, such as The first true love of Thomas Greyling, are idiosyncratic machines that integrate the personal with the cultural and provoke recognition that culture is a vibrant force that cannot be frozen in time but is always shifting, always hybrid, always improvised.

Dylan Collins investigates the structure and function of systems.

He recognizes the uncanny similarity between organic functions in humans and animals and the operations of man-made machines.

Indeed, the scientific discourses that provide understanding of the natural world influence, in turn, many mechanical processes. For example, didactic drawings explain anatomies, operations of the food chain, and engineer’s instructions.

Collins creates hybrid forms that

integrate nature and science, life forms and machines, and the presumptions of human understanding of everything around us. In Even cowmen get the blues, careful drafting of anatomical systems competes with frenzied composition.

The tipsy greenhorn, wall-mounted, is a trophy of abstracted body parts, while Half calf suggests the scale and posture of a standing human being. Using a cow motif transformed through the

artificiality of the synthetic

processes of forged metal and cast rubber and resin and further articulated through bright acid colors, Collins draws attention to the operations of contemporary corporate ecology. Erotic elements and mechanical fittings emphasize the constant negotiation between organic systems and their representation and use.

While sophisticated technology and discourses uncover mysteries, they paradoxically also reveal the distance we often strive to maintain from the unrestrained beauty and grotesqueries that animate our visceral reality.

Donald Henson combines abstracted plant, animal and mechanical forms in biomorphic objects. He extends the pop culture genre of science fiction and puts it in dialogue with contemporary sculptural concerns and the history of formalist object making. Machined metal, turned wood, and formed plastic are the basis for new, vibrant forms that incorporate the active possibilities of working machines, rambunctious animals and growing plants. Henson’s work often suggests an unknown function and potential action, inspiring a range of response from curiosity to unease. Like a spider in its web, Seeker appears to be at the center of its own world

and in the act of extending into other environments.

Seeker’s central body seems to writhe under its skin, oozing metal from its pores.

Henson creates each of his sculptures with the idea of them almost being sentient, with specific modes of existence and individual narrative. Leech is an organic form, with head, body, and tail, and though composed of aluminum and resin, Leech may become dangerous at any moment.

In waiting seems to oscillate between a history as part of an archaic device or, perhaps the reverse, the beginnings of a futuristic machine; nevertheless, its design suggests the internal logic of

a composite being. With the unconscious actions of an autonomic nervous system or the work of an automated machine, Henson’s constructions suggest hybrid life in a parallel world.

– Scott A. Sherer and Alyosha Burkey

This page (left to right) Donald Henson, Leech, 72” x 36” x 60”, 2006 Donald Henson, Leech, (detail) 72” x 36” x 60”, 2006 Donald Henson, Seeker, 42”x 8”x 8”, 2006

Cover image: Dylan Collins, The tipsy greenhorn, (detail), 50” x 15” x 18”, 2006 Images inside (left to right) Andries Fourie, For the pleasure of the queen, 35” x 32” x 18”, 2009 Andries Fourie, Nostalgia II, 36” x 48”, 2009 Andries Fourie, Keeping madam satisfied, 65”x 41” x 24”, 2009 Andries Fourie, The first true love of Thomas Greyling,

68” x 25” x 18”, 2008 Dylan Collins, Half calf, 47” x 32” x 24”, 2008-2009 Dylan Collins, Half calf, (detail), 47” x 32” x 24”, 2008-2009 Dylan Collins, The tipsy greenhorn, 50” x 15” x 18”, 2006 Dylan Collins, Even cowmen get the blues, 37” x 26”, 2007-2009 Donald Henson, In Waiting, (detail), 24” x 5” x 18”, 2006 Donald Henson, In Waiting, 24” x 5” x 18”, 2006

Gallery Hours: Friday - Sunday 12pm - 6pm Open for First Friday, March 6, 6pm - 9pm by appointment: 210.458.4391 Scott A. Sherer, PhD - Gallery Director Connie Swann - Satellite Space Coordinator UTSA Satellite Space Blue Star Arts Complex 115 Blue Star San Antonio, Texas 78204 Phone: 210.212.7146

UTSA Art Department One UTSA Circle San Antonio, Texas 78249 Phone: 210.458.4391 http://art.utsa.edu

Photography: Courtesy of the artists Copyright Š 2009 by The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form by any means without written permission of the artists or publishers.