Jody Paulsen – he calls himself a ‘visual artist’ – is one of the youngest of a new generation of artists making waves in a post-apartheid South Africa.
Jody Paulsen – he calls himself a ‘visual artist’ – is one of the youngest of a new generation of artists making waves in a post-apartheid South Africa.
Jody Paulsen is one of the youngest, and brightest, lights of South Africa’s contemporary art world. At 26 and a recent graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, he has already landed himself a monster commission – a collage for its permanent collection from the Zeitz MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary Art Africa) due to open at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront in 2016. Paulsen is becoming known for these collages (posters, he calls them), which, assembled from felt cut-out words and shapes, are perceived as a narrative on and critique of popular culture juxtaposed with his own private preoccupations. There’s wry humour here: he might be a one-man cottage industry producing craftlike, glued-on, felt-swatch works and yet, with names like Manhunt or The Universal Fag Map or Metropolitan City Man, these collages are performing in that ersatz world occupied by brands and magazines, online dating, celebrity and quick-and-easy gratification.
Like many artists before him, Jody’s work acts as a social record, reflecting his life and times. What great artists do, however, no matter what the specific lens their patron expects them to see the world through, is manage to represent a personal agenda at the same time. This was a role played most famously by Goya who, working at the Spanish Bourbon court in the 18th century, was a social recorder with a personal agenda. As official court painter, his pictures of the royal family were seen as statements of social position, although, in fact, all the while he, Goya, was laughing at the royals, introducing to their portraits caricature, satire and irony. One of the most extraordinary things about Paulsen is that he’s doing exactly the same thing. He’s a social recorder who at the same time manages to present a personal agenda.
At first glance Paulsen’s felt collages look like those decorative tapestries you’d have found in the 1970s or 1980s in grand opera houses or government buildings – you know, a bit of decoration put at the bottom of staircases to absorb the sound. But closer inspection reveals content that isn’t so cosy after all. The Universal Fag Map, for example, records the names of famously raunchy gay cruising sites around the world, Cape Town among them. He’s found a way to be a social recorder, like Goya, fulfilling a public role as court jester, and yet his art, talking about the icons and the iconography that informs his lifestyle, is deeply personal. It’s tabloid art for a throwaway age.
You see coded clues to some of Paulsen’s preoccupations in his tiny, white apartment in Tamboerskloof, at the top of Cape Town. On his desk, the Butt Book, at his bedside The Gentlewoman, a biannual magazine allowing the reader a window on fashion that’s focused on women’s personal style. Paulsen imagines working for a magazine one day and would love an internship at Vogue. After all, he claims that the greatest influence on his work is fashion – and his design work with the fashion label Adriaan Kuiters is the obvious evidence of an obsession.
If his work is a cacophony of colour and pattern and messaging, his apartment is quiet, even empty. ‘It’s a palate cleanser,’ Paulsen says. ‘It’s like the way I dress. It’s quiet. Right now, artistically, I’m in a maximalist phase. I don’t like any blank spaces. But when I come home, it’s nice being in a white room. I don’t think that I need to apply my art aesthetic to every facet of my life. And anyway, I hate having shit that just doesn’t mean anything in my space. I don’t like clutter because that’s what my studio is full of. I like feeling that I can breathe in here.’
The view from the apartment’s windows towards Table Mountain and the full sweep of the City Bowl is magnificent. But as we sit and chat, he says he’s moving on, this apartment is soon to be a thing of the past. This transient lifestyle is par for the course in a 26-year-old’s life and, like his art, gives only a fleeting glimpse of the pre-occupations of a young artist who is just beginning to make his mark.
The Universal Fag Map (I Search the World for You), 2013, Paulsen’s collage meticulously constructed from bits of cut-out synthetic felt glued into position, is a record of iconic bars and clubs associated with a gay cruising culture. His ‘felt posters’ are juxtaposed brand and logo signage like instant gratification, recalling that flaunting of consumerist identities in Tracey Emin, Yayoi Kusama and Sarah Lucas.
The intensity of Paulsen’s work, and the din of its colour and design, are diametrically opposed to the emptiness of his living space. This Tamboerskloof apartment is the home of a person starting out – someone living light who chooses instead to put everything into his art. ‘My house is a palate cleanser,’ he says.
‘I don’t think that I apply my art aesthetic to every facet of my life. I quite enjoy other people’s aesthetics. I’m quite a fan, in a way, of what other people are doing. It’s quite nice to just be like a normal person and enjoy reading and fashion and stuff.’
Bold visual statements and coded narratives can be seen as sources of inspiration placed not-quite-at-random around the apartment: Vivienne Westwood on the cover of The Gentlewoman, the iconic Butt Book and the bold typography on Zadie Smith’s The Embassy of Cambodia.