“I’m treating the workshop as a space for playing and the prints are the marks and residue of playing” Oupa Sibeko, 2025
Sibeko’s second visit to the David Krut Workshop (DKW) centred around interpreting the space itself, allowing himself to be influenced by the environment, people and objects within the studio. Sibeko’s 2-dimensional practice revolves around the notion of “play” and this playfulness is felt throughout this series of monotypes. Oupa uses playful colours and materials that are generally dismissed in the art world but integral to the sense of “play” that he brings. Pinks, blues and purples are used in conjunction with Stabilo Woodies Kids crayons, rough charcoal and soft pastels.
The series of watercolour prints began with Sibeko scrunching and folding newsprint, placing it underneath a piece of perspex, and tracing the shapes to create the outlines of the characters, taking the shape of chairs. The image of the chair took root from the concrete bench that stands guard outside DKW’s door. Sibeko became interested in the bench because of the shadows that the metal staircase cast, shifting and changing the shape of the bench as the day progressed.
Sibeko applies a different personality and identity to these characters through the choice of colour, mark making and facial features, customizing each character for each print. A variation for each of the personalities that move in and out of the workshop.
Oupa’s oil-based monotypes began to explore environment and space, considering how the inside and outside of the workshop interact. Working reductively to demarcate space and the outline of each character while also using torn newsprint as a blockout to construct the silhouette of characters. In these spaces he began to add drawn handwork using pastel, crayon and charcoal.
When adding hand work, he works intuitively on these open areas of paper left from previous printed layers, creating and forming characters inside the shapes made by the newsprint blockouts. Sibeko’s format for these three large oil-based monotypes involves the David Krut Projects emblem that is mounted to the wall outside the entrance, reminding him of a postage stamp on a letter or postcard. This is manifested in using 3 of his watercolour monotypes as the stamp itself on the envelope/letter of the print.
Sibeko says: “the play happens inside the letter but remember(s) the emblem and the bench outside. It’s about the play inside the letter and outside the letter”. Sibeko’s sense of interior and exterior as inspiration and fields of play can be felt in the compositions of these larger prints through his drawn mark and choicely selecting where each colour lands, overlaps and or leaves an open area of paper.
This project is an ode to Sibeko’s practice of play and his playing within the practice. Pushing the envelope by questioning each part of the process and allowing for tweaks and pivoting at every corner, his intuition and immediacy has married well with the tedious and planned nature of print by allowing himself space to play with every layer.
Detail shot of Sibeko’s prints
David Krut Projects, Johannesburg
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David Krut Workshop, Arts on Main
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Johannesburg
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David Krut Workshop, Arts on Main
264 Fox Street, City and Suburban
Johannesburg
+27 (0)11 334 1209
[email protected]
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