Driaan Claassen
Driaan Claassen and Catherine Ash will be in residence from 28 October – 27 November 2022. During their residency, they will continue their ongoing collaboration, making use of the electric and wood-fired kilns at the Centre to produce a series of sculptures made out of ceramics, glass, and wood, that grapple with mental health. Their proposed works foregrounds the use of wood as a mediator between glass and ceramics, making reference to the elements as a way to both ground and connect the internal and external, physical and mental, aspects of the human anatomy; a connection which is also apparent in the case of trees and neurons that take on a Lichtenberg or dendritic-type pattern.
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Born in Johannesburg in 1991, sculptor Driaan Claassen first studied 3D animation before apprenticing with Otto du Plessis, artist and founder of Bronze Age Foundry. Claassen is currently based in Cape Town, where he opened his own design and fine art studio, Reticence, in 2015.
Claassen works primarily in bronze, wood and wire. Inspired by technology from a young age, he elevates the materiality of his sculptural mediums by merging
cutting-edge machinery, traditional craftsmanship and deep introspection. For Claassen, manipulating the physical world has psychological implications.
Through the abstracted forms his sculptures take whether solid or fractal, geometric or organic he reflects on the structure of the human mind and thought. He explores the intersection of our consciousness with the outside world, where light and dark meet, positive and negative space, the defined and amorphous,
order and chaos. Claassen has created a visual language that juxtaposes shape, colour, textur,e and pattern to offer insight into his search for self-knowledge. -
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