A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Bringing together figurative sculptures made in both wood and bronze, Genesis reimagines scenes and characters from the suburban landscape of Cape Town that Schreuders calls home. Using the raw material of her own life as the foundation to create portraits that are equally archetypal and idiosyncratic, Schreuders explores how specific forms can convey universal truths and how personal history remains fundamentally connected to social reality. For over thirty years, Schreuders has made sculptures about the human figure that express a deep understanding of human psychology. Working slowly and gradually, Schreuders carefully shapes her material to create uncannily familiar subjects that invite association and comparison while at the same time resisting any single link or reference. Though the poses and arrangements of her figures are often static, straightforward and direct, Schreuders pays great attention to the subtleties of each face, where slight inflections of shape and contour, or line and color, can provide viewers with the necessary detail to see humanity in figures that might otherwise appear impersonal. Looking at the historical examples of West African and Medieval sculpture, American folk and outsider art as well, Schreuders borrows the simplicity of form and composition found in those traditions as a way of sparking interpretation and emotional investment.
The works in Genesis were made after the conclusion of Schreuders’ previous exhibition with the gallery, Doubles, in 2022. In that exhibition, Schreuders investigated the universal experience of isolation that resulted from the lockdown during COVID-19 pandemic. Her sculptural figures were rendered in joined pairs in which each seemed to hauntingly, if not exactly, mirror the other. In Genesis Schreuders returned to the confines of her own home or studio and looked at the larger world of the suburbs as a kind of idyll in itself, one that can provide the time and space to contemplate the essential structures and forms of life around us…."
