David Krut Publishing

Buthelezi’s studio is located in Doornfontein, one of the oldest districts in the CBD of the still so young city, Johannesburg. Up until recently this area of downtown Johannesburg was still a no-go area, however it has been developing into the art and fashion district of the metropolis and mega-city.

It is always startling, when entering Mbongeni Buthelezi’s studio, the floor is covered almost half a metre high with plastic sheets in a variety of colours. The artist and his visitor, virtually stand knee-deep in the “artist’s palette” and lined up on the walls one can see all the different stages of image production, from the very beginning to the finished picture. Here one can literally understand very directly what Buthelezi is doing.

For his artworks Buthelezi exclusively uses industrially produced plastic materials with various imprinting. Thick plastic foils and plastic canvas covers, like the ones used for protection and outer coverage of transportable palettes, as well as plastic bags or the cling-foil which is used as printed wrapping for beverage cans or bottles. Buthelezi selects these various plastic sheets, besides their strength, according to the imbued, dyed or multicoloured printing of the foils.

At the beginning of his career Buthelezi collected these plastic wraps himself, over the years he has established his own collecting-network – a kind of recycling. On the one hand he can pick up entire rolls of dyed plastic, which are not used any more from the producers. On the other hand one encounters selected rubbish collectors all over Johannesburg who collect plastic wraps according to his specifications and deliver them to him directly. Here, the dirty and unusable wrappings are rejected and the usable ones are then scattered across the floor of his studio.

Therefore Buthelezi does not use randomly collected rubbish, but specifically found materials. The first step of this process was arguably the most important one, because at the beginning of the 90s, when looking at the mountains of plastic, bags and wrappings, he didn’t see rubbish, which had to be thrown away, but saw colours and shapes, which one had to keep or even re-create. He saw something positive, colourful, which one could use in a new and different way. In this sense Buthelezi stands for the traditions of African art, using and rededicating second hand material and at the same time through the recycling of everyday material he is in a European sense at the core of his time. So in a way Buthelezi is part of the modern recycling process – however in an exquisite form, as he transforms rubbish into art.

Buthelezi achieved the next crucial step toward his work of today by having the unbelievably experimental idea of melting the plastic foils together by means of a customary heat gun. Hence his pictures cannot be compared to the known “Objet trouvé”, the “Assemblages” or the “Ready-made”. Deserting these traditional trails he creates something new, which has never been made before. Consequently the wrappings are not just combined, but are melted together in a process of painting. The movement, the artist’s flow in this melting process, reminding of brushstrokes, is an essential part of the picturesque effect of Mbongeni Buthelezi’s pictures.

Buthelezi’s pictures do in fact consist in their entirety of plastic sheets. No other material is used. He replaces the canvas with layers of thicker sheets, the oil paint he replaces through colourful sheets, wrappings and bags. The picture is constructed, as in classic painting, from the depth, the background of the “plastic wall”. Depending on the aspired picture the backgrounds are black, white or coloured. Layers of monochrome in turn follow these from white, black, or diverse colours. Not until this “visual enhancement” does the actual picture emerge, sometimes entirely free, sometimes by means of a black outline. Thus up to 40 plastic (colour) layers can succeed one after the other and some pictures consist of tens of thousands of plastic fragments. He transforms, fragments and de-fragments the material.

As easy as it is described here, however, it is not, as years of experience are necessary to perfect this process of melting such as Buthelezi achieves it. He knows all the kinds of plastic and their behaviour, their melt flow, their liquidation, change of colour, differences of the front and backside, possibilities of combination, layers and colour failures. He achieves his effects not only by adding more layers but also by fusing down the already existing layers. Buthelezi is a magician of his heat gun, the melting, the fusing, and the connecting of his creation. In his pictures the “what has been” is just as present as the “created”, the old just as the new, the two-dimensionality as well as the relief, transformation beside transcription.

Today his experience enables him to adequately realise all kinds of fine art expressions, such as drawing, watercolour, woodcarving or painting with his technique. In painting his possibilities range from disordered two-dimensionality to relief raised plasticity. He is able to work black and white, monochrome, grisaille, coloured, figuratively or abstract. He alludes to impressionism, expressionism, the abstraction of figures, and European and African art – but at the same time always stays authentic. Furthermore the material unfolds to the special feature of a relief raised surface design. His pictures appear completely different from near and afar.  Close-up the abstract relief impression of the material overwhelms one, from afar the picturesque figures. As in the process of collecting also the processing or better the process of formation of his pictures is as far as possible excluded from coincidence.

After the technical side, we will now consider Mbongeni Buthelezi’s pictures with regards to the content. In his figurative works Buthelezi is, in the classical sense, the storyteller. He stands in the tradition of the African oral history; only he speaks in pictures. Hereby his picture stories are local as well as global, but originating from the black African reality of life. Origin and surrounding are just as important as are the questions of our time. Children, women, men, adolescence, age, poverty, happiness, education, life, love, sorrow. His images are turned toward the world, in a way infinitely positive, as they describe, record and present the world.

When looking at the large-sized picture “Thirst”, we can identify the head of a man in profile in the bottom right hand side. Physiognomy and colour suggest that he is a black man. His head is tilted back resting in his neck both his arms are outstretched into the sky. His gaze is looking up at his hands or to be more precise looking at a calabash, which he is holding in his hands. He holds this calabash so that it is tipped so far forward that the liquid, which is in there streams out and into his open mouth. This form of the drinking vessel, as well as the drinking as such, suggest a calabash filled with water. We therefore identify a drinking black man.

Through the arms, which reach from the bottom left to the top middle of the picture, the viewer’s reading direction of the picture is supported or rather guided. Over the horizontal calabash and the downward escaping liquid the gaze is then channelled to the actual centre of the picture, namely the open mouth with the inflowing water. Compositionally the gaze of the observer is given by the section of the upturned head in the right hand side of the lower half of the picture and through the gaze of the drinker it is thrown back onto the central composition. The gaze of the observer is therefore trapped and encircles the actual event – the action of drinking, of satisfying one’s thirst.

The formal centre of the picture has therefore been clearly described. This impression is supported by the un-colourfulness of the picture. Buthelezi produced this large-sized picture solely with one colour on a white background. Out of the milky light brown wrapping he developed by means of multi-layering brown colours to a deep dark. In its entirety the picture appears to be monochrome. The rejection of colour results in the concentration on the motif. The light white of the down flowing water stands out and supports the composition. The deliberately chosen sepia colouring reminds of historical black and white photography.

Considering the content there is far more to it than a drinking man. Posture, gesture and facial expression speak for a very thirsty man, who literally savours to the fullest the moment of quenching his thirst. The image expresses such directness that we as the observer can experience and understand this feeling. Thereby the intensity of the picture lies in its simplicity and reduction down to the essential. Everything is concentrated on to this one moment, the refreshing wet that touches the mouth and quenches the thirst.

Thirst, drink, water, spring, refreshment, and life – all this plays a role here. Water and its availability, a basic need but a global problem of our time. By showing the observer the waterfall streaming into the mouth of the man is a perfect allegory, symbol or metaphor for thirst and its satisfaction.

Another big theme in Buthelezi’s work is childhood. Colourful images which show the bond between mothers and their children; playfulness and friendship; learning and education are important to the artist. The picture of the girl reading in the light of a candle can be considered as a parable for this. It is a picture full of hope and confidence. This positive side of the coming of age is antagonized with a black and white series of children’s portraits. The viewer looks into faces full of questions, fear and loneliness. The interesting fact is that throughout, Buthelezi produces these black faces on a black background with white reinforced. Music and rhythm (Jazzing it up) are also thematically important in all his characteristics, as well as the transient architecture of the Townships of South Africa. The social surroundings changes and Buthelezi reacts to it.

Mbongeni Buthelezi always surprises and pleases the observer which is seldom, in the arts. In a sense Buthelezi is changing the most used material of our times –plastic, in an absolutely unique way. He has developed a new form of art and perfected it. This new form stands equal to the classical painting and is the perfect expression of our time. He changes the most used and artificial product of our time plastic bags which are frequently produced and directly used for very short periods, with their content only for advertising into a timeless art work.

Ralf Seippel, Johannesburg June 2009

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Keywords: Painting, History, Arts-and-Culture, Design, monograph, Photography, Art, South-African, International, Bookstore