Betwixt and Between, Oil on canvas, 2024

BETWIXT

24 May - 28 June 2025

Rust-en-Vrede Gallery + Clay Museum
10 Wellington Road, Durbanville, Cape Town, South Africa

.“Betwixt” is a body of works imbued with a sly sense of humour, eroticism, and a striking palette. Being both bold and subtle; messages sneak out to ambush the viewer from the cover of a highly seductive decorative camouflage, being at once beautiful and strange.

The juxtaposition of painting and drawing, levity and gravity, sexual confidence and emotional frailty, gives meaning to the title “Betwixt” for this body of work. As viewer we drift into a liminal terrain that hovers somewhere betwixt and between..

Andre's approach is intuitive, following suggestions that arise out of the process of painting and drawing. Starting with the intention to portray someone who is visually interesting to him, Andre allows subconscious prompts and technical glitches during the working process to take the lead. This working methodology infuses the works with a surreal, dream-like quality, where nothing is quite what it seems.

The subtle visual puns present in many of the works, invite to reflect on the complexity of human sensuality, our compulsion to see others as objects of desire, with our understanding of ourselves and others as projections that are unstable, unrealistic and ultimately idealistic. We seem to be being asked to gently laugh at life, and delight in the richness of being all too human

Julia Teale (@juliateale)