The Dilemma of Twenty One 2024

Medium:
Dim: 212 X 122 X 49cm.
Price: R50,000

- I started carving the crab claws as a direct result of meeting a very shady character who, as the saying goes, moved sideways like a crab. This person became the bane of my life over the next decade!
- Over the years I started conceptualising the crab claws as part of a portal
- The base of the portal takes on the shape of a crab's exoskeleton. The bottom half of both of the portals’ jambs begin to resemble crab legs.
- The crab's claws block the passageway through the portal. However, if one approaches from the other side, it could have a very different feeling about it.
- As if to counter the threat of the crab claws a pair of stigmata-hands thrust outwards and upwards from the corner of the portal's lintel (referencing Goya's 3rd May painting), appealing to forces beyond the confines of the portal.
- These hands reinforce the V-shape of the upper half of the hourglass, displayed by the abacus. i.e., they are feeding into the here-and-now of time.
- The twenty-one beads of the abacus represent the twenty-first century, a coming of age of Humankind, Anno Domini's apotheosis (crucified hands).
- This coming-of-age of the twenty-first century, and all that that conjures up, is expressed by a turgid hourglass with the same number of beads above as below so that symbolically, the 'sands of time', in a sense, have been arrested for our contemplation.
- The abacus is contained in a flat disc-like shape that could represent the earth. This symbol of the earth is suspended above the crab claws as if being dandled there or trying to bait something.
- On closer inspection of the hourglass within the abacus, there comes the realization that although the beads are seemingly 'tessellated' they can be manoeuvre sideways thus disrupting the stasis of the hourglass. This moving sideways gives impetus to the crab's sideways movement, but it must be noted that any sideways movement will take the concept of the earth hanging in the confines of the portal and the appeal of the pair of hands to forces beyond the portal, with it.