CLINTON DE MENEZES
November 26, 1993

 

A recent graduate from the Natal Technikon, De Menezes exhibited collage works. These included both a series of eight identically sized panels presented on the walls, a relief construction and a bench-like structure. On the bench, images were layered onto the top surface and a book created from bound drawings lay in shallow trays attached to its sides.
Using a very iconographic presentation of these images, his vocabulary included, landscape, spirals, circles, fire, and the human hand. ‘Mandala-like’, these referenced spirituality, the earth and self‑transformation. A recurrent and significant image was that of the ‘heroic’ horse and rider with a broken sword.
Of interest was the fact that the sources for many of these collage images were taken from popular culture - advertisements to be then transformed into meaningful icons. The horse and rider image, here representing the hero with the broken sword, was originally a label from an alcohol bottle or cigarette packet. One work, addressing the notion of ‘communication’, was a collaged panel construction with a small shelf holding a working telephone. Circular symbols taken from the emergency page of the South African telephone book were features on the panel. Here an interesting linkage was created between those symbols associated with spirituality and contemplation and those with crisis.

CLINTON DE MENEZES
1993