MARNA HATTINGH | SOLO EXHIBITION
Menu
South African artist, Marna Hattingh’s travels between a hybrid of fine art, literature and the complexities or contemporary life. She interrogates and articulates its collective emotions and has developed a highly unique and sought-after style, strongly influenced by an Asian sensibility and her experience as an illustrator, blending wry humour and social comment into playful palettes with a serious undertone.
Drawing inspiration from an eclectic range including media, fashion, history and fictional novels, her finely drawn characters jump, dance and spin across timeless backgrounds. Each painting is extensively worked and contains its own complex narrative.
‘My work has always dealt with the tension between opposites and the generative energy that is created by this tension. Meaning is created between the tension of disparate ideas. I am inspired by the dichotomies of movement/stasis, solidity and fragility, simplicity and complexity, monumentality and fragility.
My work has also always dealt, in an intuitive way, with the human condition and how it feels to be a human being in this world. In particular, our inner worlds. When I was younger, I was looking much more at the individuals’s relationship to society and how an in individual should fit into society. It was a journey outward in pursuit of making sense of the very contradictory world we live in. My recent work has become more personal and perhaps depicting a journey inward. Carl Jung said ‘the first half of life is about building a healthy ego, and the second half of life is about letting go of it.’ This is a notion that resonates with me and that I have found to be true.’
South African artist, Marna Hattingh’s travels between a hybrid of fine art, literature and the complexities or contemporary life. She interrogates and articulates its collective emotions and has developed a highly unique and sought-after style, strongly influenced by an Asian sensibility and her experience as an illustrator, blending wry humour and social comment into playful palettes with a serious undertone. Drawing inspiration from an eclectic range including media, fashion, history and fictional novels, her finely drawn characters jump, dance and spin across timeless, patterned backgrounds. Each painting is extensively worked and contains its own complex narrative.
Read more
.M Contemporary © 2024
Care Plan and Maintenance by Gherkin Media
8, 15 – 19 Boundary Street
Darlinghurst, Sydney
NSW, Australia
Email: gallery@mcontemp.com