Shapeshifting

From the very earliest phases of Lewis’s career, he has exhibited continuously in partnership with the Everard Read Gallery, both in Cape Town and in Johannesburg. This exhibition saw the sculptor showing his monumental male figures for the first time, and thus is a significant milestone for him.

The scale of Everard Read Johannesburg was imminently suited to showing these monumental works indoors.

The horn skull mask worn by this large figure is reminiscent of the archetypal horned god found in several ancient mythologies, including Celtic and Hindu, the most well-known of which must be the Greek, where he is Pan. But this is not to say that Lewis is faithfully recreating only a mythical figure here. Instead, he invests a mortal man with those qualities evoked by the horned god archetype.

The ideas touched on in this exhibition are being further explored in Untamed, a collaborative project between Lewis, architect Enrico Daffoncio and psychologist, psychiatrist, wildlife guide and poet Ian McCallum. Untamed is on at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town until June 2011.