Walter Oltmann | In Time | Nirox 2023
In 2022, Walter Oltmann was awarded the Edoardo Villa Extraordinary Award for Sculpture, which empowers the continuing practice of the recipient by providing space and resources to research, produce, and exhibit new works.
Oltmann’s award also makes possible the production of a publication of the same name, for which the artist engaged in a series of ongoing conversations with different artists – Usha Seejarim, Chris Soal, and Inga Somdyala – who work in a similar way, to varying ends. These conversations led to the development of an exhibition, A Quiet Focus (2022–3), aimed to demonstrate the ideas expressed and explore the dialogue between each artist and the materials they employ, in particular their slow, repetitive process and the haptic nature of their work.
Although specific to the artist’s practice, Walter Oltmann: In Time can be viewed as an extension of this process. The bulk of works shown were produced over the last year as a result of the award. They highlight a number of ongoing threads and areas of interest, from disguise and camouflage to processes of metamorphosis, transformation, extinction and rebirth.
Artworks
About
Walter Oltmann
Walter Oltmann (born 1960, South Africa) is a practicing artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. He obtained a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg (1981), and an MA Fine Arts degree (1985) and PhD in Fine Arts degree (2017) from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He taught in the Fine arts department at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1989 to 2016.
Oltmann has an extensive record of creative work produced since the early 1980s, including a number of public commissions. Since the 1980s he has developed an interest in the relationship between fine art and craft. In his own practice he employs hand-fabricated processes of making and has researched wire craft traditions in southern Africa. His sculptural works are executed by way of weaving in wire and using handcrafting methods that reference African and Western traditions of weaving. He is deeply interested in the influence of craft traditions in contemporary South African art.
In his artworks Oltmann makes connections to domestic textile practices and explores such forms of making in evoking fragility and the passage of time. He often combines aspects of decorative ornament with subject matter that seems somewhat contradictory or disturbing in relation to handcrafted embellishment.
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