The fragile beauty found within a divided, bittersweet Wynberg

Wynberg is one of Cape Town’s strangest suburbs. Equally split between the semi-squalor and derelict Main Road section adjoining the train station, a middle class residential zone infused with dreary office parks, and mink and manure residences towards Wynberg Hill, it represents the unequal demographic landscape of SA. As such, Wynberg has something of everything: chop-shops, R5 kiosks, pavement barbers and elite boutiques; green parks and grey tenements; shebeens and fine-china tea rooms. And interesting art to be appreciated, too.

Books on the Renaissance masters, pages tacked with Post-its, are scattered around the studio of Andrew Mokgatla in the unfashionable but utilitarian side of the suburb. They add to the agreeable jumble, in keeping with the notion of an energetic but reflective artist-as-student, always learning, observing and experimenting, but with deep respect for traditional techniques. 

Mokgatla is striving to expand the versatility of his stylistic expression. The core of his oeuvre is a form of abstract expressionism, Money Bull and Hout Bay Boats being two examples of vivid, hyperbolic colours combined with deep brushstrokes to create powerful, glorious images. 

His portraits are more contemplative, impressionistic, with emphasis on differences in light and shadow, and understated use of colour. Siya Kolisi is subtitled ‘It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done’, a reference to Kolisi captaining SA to rugby World Cup glory. But the grey-scale portions convey the artist’s belief that more accomplishments are still to happen — that the subject’s life journey is not yet fully coloured. Kolisi’s face is enthrallingly captured, telling us of the vigour of athletic youth as well as the stress of leadership and, even in his mind’s eye, a glint of angst for the future.

Bridging expressionism and portraiture are other pieces, notably Mentees, an oil on canvas that speaks to Mokgatla’s deep commitment to community upliftment. “I want to use art to help people grow, to expand their horizons,” says the former art teacher. The four faces in Mentees are blank, awaiting identity to their countenances — and in the mirror behind them Mokgatla as mentor is poised to guide and shape this. The room is stark, the poses rigid, but the warm and gentle colours indicate hope, and we know the mentor will do his best.

To develop his understanding of anatomy and skill in depicting its precise detail, Mokgatla has also been experimenting with sketch techniques. Rhino, a charcoal on Fabriano paper, is astonishingly lifelike, capturing the animal instinct, the creature’s definitive shape and muscles, every crevice in its skin. 

In a corner, almost hidden away, is a markedly different painting, not in stylistic comparison to the Kolisi depiction, but in its purity. Even at a distance it captures deep emotion, and on closer inspection I realise it is a self-portrait. Mokgatla created the composition as a form of catharsis at the loss of his mother to Covid-19. Her death came with compound difficulties: the pandemic meant he was unable to properly say goodbye, and the appropriate burial customs were near impossible. In his Basotho blanket, one eye shrouded in shadow, Mokgatla’s face is etched in cultural pride and personal pain. The work speaks about the solemnity of grief and a determined re-emergence from the melancholy of mourning. Mokgatla — always unassuming — is modest about the piece, but I think it is his best work to date.

He admits to not, as yet, being the polished artist he aspires to be. Some of his pieces reflect this, appearing as works-in-progress despite his claim to the contrary. In fairness, this may be attributable to the cluttered surrounds of his functional studio. Or, it may simply be because they need a frame. If so, Mokgatla could do worse than to drive less than a kilometre towards Wynberg Hill, taking two right turns to arrive at the In-Fin-Art gallery.

In operation for 45 years, In-Fin-Art specialises in custom framing — though its heart and soul is its exhibition of a selected range of SA artists. The gallery is situated in the hub of the Old Wynberg Village, one of the city’s earlier residential and commercial squares, which has retained the style of early Cape Georgian architecture dating back to the 18th-century British occupation of the Cape. Gentrification happened a long time ago, and there are no more bakeries, boarding houses, blacksmiths or watering points for horses; sadly, too, Covid caused the closure of a charming old-world tavern. But Shakespeare productions are still staged at the Maynardville open air theatre, and the area’s shops still include austere, old-fashioned interior décor and fabrics, and an equestrian supply store that describes itself — in keeping with the location — as a boutique saddlery.

My eye is drawn to a gorgeous landscape on the wall near In-Fin-Art’s reception desk. Fynbos Plains by Jenny Parsons is light, airy, the use of perspective creating a sense of space beyond its physical size. Gallery owner and manager, Nick Atkinson, speaks reverently about the prolific artist. “She is our all-time best seller,” he says. Some time ago Parsons shifted theme from urban to country landscapes, and Atkinson, aware of the artist’s intention to metamorphose again, is excited to see the next phase of her creative progression.

Actually, he speaks passionately about all the artists whose work is on display. “I wish I could source more from David Kuijers,” Atkinson says, as we admire a set of the Greyton-based artist’s small-sized giclée prints. In-Fin-Art also has two acrylics by Kuijers, Heart and A very good car watching dog. The former is on glass, the medium adding further iridescence to the eye-popping colour explosion.    

The real treat within In-Fin-Art is to climb the wooden staircase to the simple but elegant upper-floor viewing room, where visitors are invited to relax in comfort and appreciate about 15 showcase pieces. I fall in love with a bulging beauty: Ros Walters’s Bathhouse V, clearly influenced by Rubens. All sultry curves and abundant earthiness, its steaminess banishes the day’s winter cold.

The Muralist by Zimbabwean-born David Riding is striking in a different way, the crisp definitions indicative of the artist’s graphic design background, and the subject alluding to the need for humans to clarify and improve their relationship to the animal kingdom. Riding does this in playful style, too, in a series of anthropomorphic ceramic sculptures featuring a red elephant. One is intriguingly titled ‘So?’ The pachyderm is looking down at a penguin, but it’s not clear which creature is asking the question; the sculpture seems to challenge our notion of being in charge of the Earth, because we are not doing a good job.

Just before I leave In-Fin-Art, my eye catches the work of two other artists. Gabrielle Raaff’s Kommetjie V is breathtakingly simple, the canvas dominated by unadorned space conveying hazy, white-hot beach heat and a day of ephemeral pleasure. In Two youngsters in an emerald lake by Clare Menck, the water surface shimmers, and the teenagers are caught in a moment of transient beauty, an image that makes us yearn to recapture our own youth.

Aptly, these two nuanced paintings are like Wynberg: fragile in its disequilibrium, but soulful, and bittersweet.  

Gallery contact information:

In-Fin-Art, 9 Wolfe Street, Chelsea, Wynberg, T +27 21 761 2816.

Andrew Mokgatla at Grow Creative Solutions Studio, Orient Road, Wynberg, T +27 72 398 1985