CONRAD BOTES

Born 1969 in Ladismith, South Africa. Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

Conrad Botes, Cain Slays Abel, 2008 (detail), oil based paint on reverse glass, 21 x 21 cm each panel. Courtesy the artist and Michael Stevenson, Cape Town. Photograph: Mario Todeschini

Conrad Botes’ work looks at abuses of power and repression with a distinctive comic style and dark sense of humour. His irreverent explorations of human vice and existential torment reflect a particular experience of growing up as a white South African under apartheid, while his strong symbolic language, which references the Bible, comic books and folk art, transmits a broad appeal. Botes has worked as an illustrator and is also known for his association with Bitterkomix magazine an independent comic published in Cape Town featuring satirical sociopolitical content and often explicit imagery that was founded by Botes with Anton Kannemeyer in 1992.

Botes parades a cast of zombies, alcoholics, tattooed men, powerful female figures, devils and animals through his works, which range from comics to wall drawings, prints, paintings and sculptures. With an iconoclastic bent and predilection for the heavy, moral tales of Afrikaans Puritan ideology, his exhibitions of recent years have featured imagery that straddles the physical and spiritual worlds. Lumpen, wooden figures butt their heads against a stylised tree in Tree of Knowledge (2007), and present silent appeals to an animal-headed and breasted ‘virgin’ in Gates of Heaven (2007). A man with downcast eyes and horned brow sits in a blood-filled tub in Sailor (2007) and Preacher is a shirtless man in jeans who stands while inscribing biblical phrases on to his arms and torso. In the sculptural installation On Earth as it is in Heaven (2009), a trio comprising a white enamelled ‘zombie’, a dog-headed kneeling figure and a shirtless man supplicate themselves in front of a mock stained-glass window that depicts a fallen, shattered man surrounded by demonic beasts and worm-eyed skulls. Such weighty, despairridden portrayals have their counterpoint in Botes’ recent series of comics, prints and paintings that look at the story of Cain and Abel, the first documented murder as described in the Bible and Qu’ran.

Cain Slays Abel (2008) is a series of 15 small paintings on glass – a technique that has its antecedents in the Bavarian folk art form of Hinterglasmalerei, referring to painting on the reverse side of glass, which was taken up by such artists as Wassily Kandinsky in the early twentieth century for its expressive potential and resulting luminous colours. The work forms part of Botes’ ongoing study of racial violence and its origins, and derives from a 26-page comic that was published by Botes in Bitterkomix #15. In his black-and-white comic, Botes translated the biblical story of rivalry and murder between brothers into an illustrated allegory of aggression, corruption, lust, payback and its consequences. Presented in clear, bright colours with Botes’ sharp, graphic delineation of lines, the series of images in his paintings on glass is seeped in impulsive, destructive action and gut-wrenching regret. In this, as in many of his works, Botes’ portrayal of depravity and human weakness is not without mercy, but presents a raw and unrepentant meditation on the disquieted soul.

puma.creative Mobility Award recipient.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2009 ‘Crime and Punishment’, Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg, South Africa
2009 ‘Cain and Abel’, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa
2007 ‘Satan’s Choir at the Gates of Heaven’, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa
2005 ‘Devil’s Bullets’, Erdman Contemporary, Cape Town, South Africa
2005 ‘Notes from Underground’, Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg, South Africa

Selected Group Exhibitions

2009 ‘Bitterkomix: Un certain regard sur l’Afrique du Sud’, Angoulême International Comics Festival, Angoulême, France
2008 ‘Farewell to Post-Colonialism’, 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China
2007 ‘Apartheid: The South African Mirror’, Centre de Cultura de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2006 ‘Africa Comics’, Studio Museum, Harlem, New York, USA
2004 ‘+Positive’, Biennale of Merano, Merano, Italy

Selected Bibliography

David Brodie, ‘Conrad Botes’, 10 years 100 Artists: Art in a Democratic South Africa, Sophie Perryer (ed.), Bell-Roberts, Cape Town, 2004, pp. 58–59
Stacy Hardy, ‘Cain and Abel’, Cain and Abel, exhibition catalogue, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, 2009, pp. 2–5
Ashraf Jamal, ‘The Rat in Art’, The Rat in Art: Conrad Botes, Pop and the Posthuman, exhibition catalogue, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town, 2004, pp. 2–15
Andy Mason, ‘Bitterkomix 2002: Silent Comics, Critical Noise and the Politics of Pielsuig’, The Big Bad Bitterkomix Handbook, Sandy Shepherd (ed.), Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2006, pp. 4–15
Ivor Powell, ‘The Trophy of Vultures’, Conrad Botes: Satan’s Choir at the Gates of Heaven, exhibition catalogue, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, 2007, pp. 2–3