Jacobus Kloppers - Middelburg, toekoms
Movement as Settlement
A terrain can only be owned in as far as it is occupied, and this is attained by naming and mark-making. This mark-making is our cultural intercourse with the landscape.
The renaming of places in contemporary South Africa and the accompanying polemics confront one with questions such as: By what do we know a place? What is our relationship with a specific place? And, above all: What does it mean to yearn for a place?
My work is primarily concerned with the experience and continuous rethinking of place. In my work, “place” becomes a passage, a temporary station, a now-place. It is marked for temporary meaning within the context of a journey which itself can be the only true destination.
For the postmodern human, which by definition is increasingly displaced, it is possible to find a new home someplace in thought, a “spiritual” place which, like a road, stretches in all directions and where movement itself becomes a settlement.
Road maps, road signs and signposts are elementary tools which help travellers to understand their relationship with place. But this relationship is at best never consummated. In these new works I play with the relationships of naming; the physical and metaphysical interwovenness of travel, place as point of departure and destination, and finally, landmarks as “mindmarks”.
Jacobus Kloppers
2003
To view the works exhibited click here
To view the Jacobus Kloppers page click here
To view the Artist’s CV click here
© Johans Borman Fine Art