Work
The Discomfort Zone and the aftermath of relationships (a fitting description of my work).
LITERATURE has long inspired great art, such as Sir John Everett Millais’s 1852 painting Death of Ophelia; Ford Madox Brown’s Romeo and Juliet from 1870; the famous sketch of Don Quixote by Pablo Picasso created in 1955; and Salvador Dali’s Mad Tea Party from 1969. And literature continues to inspire art, including a body of works titled, The Discomfort Zone, by artist Karlien de Villiers. The title of this body of paintings and drawings is borrowed from the 2006 novel The Discomfort Zone, by US author Jonathan Franzen. The book reflects the values and contradictions of the American midwest in the 1960s, and explores human existence as a site of connection and loneliness. The tragedy of such an existence, Franzen suggests, is our own inability to find comfort in the moment and in the people we share our lives with.
In a similar vein, De Villiers’s body of work explores the values and moral ambiguities of South African suburbia, and treats the human and its relationships as a site of aftermath. Despite the seeming simplicity of the subject matter and the straightforward titles, these works suggest the human and his or her social existence to be anything but effortless. Whoreish wives, flaccid men, doomed affairs, devastated lovers, traumatised husbands and lonely spouses abound in these images.
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While a pervading sense of melancholy set the scene for these disastrous scenarios, De Villiers’s work is saturated with humour, suggesting an emotional landscape that is never as clear or stable as we imagine it to be in real life. There is something slightly grotesque, yet comical, about these subjects with their enlarged, fleshy faces, stripped of anything but the obvious, pared-down human characteristics. These subjects are simultaneously tropes of gender, sexuality and power, as well as idiosyncratic, somewhat vulnerable and tragic creatures.
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If these little human monsters have anything to suggest, it is that love and hate lie on different sides of the same blade.
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01
Selected works on paper from various exhibitions: mixed media, acrylics, gouache, inks, oils, watercolour on paper.
02
Samples from my illustration, comics and graphic novel works including my first graphic novel, process work and selected pages and process work from my next book.
03
A sample of my sculptural works: wood-carving, with metal details, resin casting and enamel paint. Various exhibitions.
04
Selected samples of my printmaking practice, including oil and watercolour monotypes on paper and lithographs.
05
Selected works on canvas, wood and glass: in various media including acrylics, gouache, oil paint, reverse glass painting.
06
Origin story. Samples of my sketchbooks and process from 1997 onwards, giving an overview of my creative processes.
07
Selected series - Book Covers Series: For the love of Books. A series of works featuring some of my favourite books/book covers: celebrating the book as object.