Douglas Gimberg
17 March – 12 May 2025
During his residency, Douglas Gimberg collaborated with his partner, Diana Vives, on a series of different works whilst presenting an exhibition, titled Folie à Deux in the Project Space.
Directly translated, the title means ‘the madness of two’. In French, for instance, it’s used to describe a couple who are always engaged in love and conflict; anything that generates enough friction to create either a downward or upward spiral. It is also a term used in psychiatry for a complex disorder characterised by the contagion of a specific delusion shared by two or more people. Yet for their residency, the artists come as one. Theirs is a madness shared with the Earth and all of its output — a timeous theme in our information age. Folie à Deux also concedes to the beauty and passion of the co-dependent romance of human life with the Earth, the stories we tell to make sense of it, as well as our attempts to contain, manage, and manipulate it.
The exhibition groups six of the artists' works into three distinct pairs (one work by each), echoing the resonance of their engagements, and the different associations that emerge when brought together. Central to both of their practices is the transformation of matter — whether living, non-living or human — in states of entanglement and flux. Existing in states of tension or balance, the works implicate the past as an active participant in the present, drawing on the self-referential, physical, and metaphorical properties of the materials to touch on themes of extraction, entropy, and regeneration.
A fitting home for this show, the Cradle of Humankind brings to the fore the origin of our species as well as the five mass extinction events that have occurred since life first emerged on Earth 4.6 billion years ago (notably,
several of the materials in the works predate these events). This symbolic framework places in stark relief the absurdity of certain human endeavours in the modern world.
To learn more, access the catalogue in the archive section below.
-
Since graduating from UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2006, Gimberg has maintained a continuous artistic practice, both independently and in collaboration. Notable collaborative projects include working as the artist duo Gimberg Nerf (with Christian Nerf), as part of The Trustees (alongside Barend de Wet, Christian Nerf, and Francis Burger), and in ongoing collaboration with his partner, Diana Vives. To support himself and sustain his independence, he runs a school dedicated to the traditional arts of painting, drawing, and figurative sculpture. However, his practice is primarily in conceptual and formalist sculpture, and extends to include performance, photography and painting. ‘My work is shaped by everyday encounters with phenomena and the persistent tensions inherent in human endeavour - particularly the paradoxes and contradictory expressions surrounding the will to preserve,’ explains Gimberg. ‘I draw theoretical insight from philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Michel Foucault, Timothy Morton, among others, whose ideas challenge my thinking.’
-
