Jephan de villiers, Figures of Silence

Trees and water are of central importance throughout the artist’s work. Whether as a reminder of the origins of life or as testimonies of ancestral beliefs and practices, nothing has  been  invented  in  this  singular  world  of  sculptures.

Everything in his work has been composed and transferred from a forgotten world. His creations are made from materials derived from natural objects that have fallen to the ground: splinters of wood, bark, water chestnuts, rays’ eggs, mysterious sea balls washed up by the ocean and fragments of horseshoe crab shells.

For the artist, the Time he devotes to his work means being alone, in the strictest sense of the word. It is Time spent scouring  the  ground,  in  search  of  materials  gathered  “on the edge of the world”. His work of one of memory, a tribute to  all  those  on  the  look-out,  watching  over  our  forgotten  world