Chris Soal’s work invites us to question our perception around found objects and other industrial materials — overlooked items that carry meaning and open up conversations around our at-times destructive relationship with our environment, and our sense of value. His body of work is simultaneously an exploration of materiality, and a reaction and a comment to Johannesburg’s socio-political tensions.
His current solo exhibition, ‘As below so above‘, is on at Whatiftheworld until 1 May 2021.
Q > Give an example of a successful project you’ve completed — and tell us about what factors were responsible for its success.
A > The existence and functionality of my studio feels like my most successful project to date. Learning how to set up a space that can flexibly cater for multiple projects and, even more importantly, learning how to work with numerous individuals towards a singular vision, while also allowing for their particular approaches, has been incredibly challenging yet rewarding. Most of my energy has gone into fostering relationships with my team and communicating my vision and philosophy to them, but this has also paid off with allowing me the space to pursue and develop new ideas while production on projects can happen simultaneously.
Q > What patterns, routines or rituals define or help to shape your life and its rhythms?
A > With the disruption that the global pandemic caused in 2020, I really felt the importance and need for rituals, routines, and patterns in my life. I became rather strict about existing routines and even managed to implement a few new ones. Daily journalling (sometimes known as “morning pages”), regular exercise, reading, consistent sleep, weekly sabbaths (intentional time off, artist dates) are things that I fight to keep “sacred.” I also try to scatter little pleasures here and there just to remind myself that I’m alive; cool sparkling water is perhaps my most mundane yet often the most pleasurable of these treats.
Q > What themes do you like to explore in your work, and why?
A > The themes that arise in my work are always informed by the direction and forms that the material leads me in. However, I am aware that through the use of ubiquitous, and often discarded, objects, the very fact that I am working with them in the way I do engages the viewer’s perception and challenges their assumptions around value. My sculptural sensibilities have led me to take a phenomenological approach to my practice, considering my work as thought-embodied through its very nature and process.
Q > Which things would you like to include more in your life; what would you like to include less of?
A > Some things I’d definitely like to have more of include more room for unstructured activity (daydreaming perhaps?), more reading (of fiction specifically — it’s easy to justify non-fiction reading as work), and more outdoor adventures. I could certainly do with less social media, and less second-guessing.
Q > Which part of the creative process is most satisfying; which part of it is most frustrating (or challenging) — explain why?
A > One of the most satisfying aspects of the creative process recently, is how a material can lead you in a new direction despite having worked closely with it for years. I feel like the capacity for being surprised within one’s own practice is something that definitely keeps me engaged, and trusting in the potential of the material to reinvigorate itself in the studio has also taught me to be patient. I’ve found learning to trust my intuition to be one of the most challenging aspects: it’s such a still small voice that sometimes picking it out of all the thoughts, comments, and fears about a work can be difficult. Journalling or going on long walks have often been helpful ways of cutting through the noise and paying attention to my actual feelings and thoughts on a work or exhibition.
Q > Tell us about your material choices, and how these raise questions about larger societal concerns.
A > I’m often hesitant to say that I chose a material — it mostly feels like the material chooses me. There’s always a relationship with my body, a way of fiddling with the material (in the case of the toothpicks and the bottle tops) and the way the material imprints itself on me, both physically and conceptually. Not only are these materials readily accessible, but they’re embedded within the larger social fabric, which allows me to engage with concerns that I feel are significant to this time and place.
Q > What do you hope viewers of your new exhibition will walk away with?
A > I hope that the work imprints itself on the viewer in the same way that the materials have imprinted themselves on me. I hope that a spatial awareness is manifested, and that the viewer’s complicity in relation both to the work and the world is felt and embodied.
Q > What can be done to address unequal access to spaces and opportunities within post-apartheid society?
A > I’m not sure I can comprehensively address this, and I don’t think that my work seeks to either. I do think that within the post-apartheid context, wealth still remains largely in the hands of a wealthy, white minority. And as long as art is considered a (luxury) commodity to be exchanged within a market economy, what is bought, sold, and validated will be controlled by that minority. A reassessment of our collective evaluation of art could be one way of opening more avenues for enabling diverse artistic practices. (See Lewis Hyde’s The Gift for what I think is one well researched and presented way of considering this contemporary dilemma.)
Chris Soal (b. 1994, South Africa) is an award-winning, emerging artist living and practicing in Johannesburg. Using unconventional found objects, such as toothpicks and bottle caps, in conjunction with concrete and other industrial materials, Soal negotiates structural impacts on urban living and reflects on ecological concerns.
Soal’s spatial approach to sculpture reveals a sensitivity to texture, light and form, expressed in an abstract minimalist language. While, conceptually, his works refer to the socio-political context of their making, highlighting the histories embedded in the found material, and utilising them in a way that challenges societal assumptions of value.
