ARTIST STATEMENT
In ‘ABANDONED’, Guto Bussab uses oil on canvas to explore the fine line between presence and disappearance. This series of abstract expressionism unfolds across heavily textured, plaster-like impasto surfaces, against which silhouettes flicker in and out of view. Bussab’s signature touch is characterised by throwing paint and turpentine, repeatedly rotating the canvas between landscape and portrait orientation, and ultimately manoeuvring the heartbeat onto canvas.
Bussab’s distinctive style is evident in the tapping and beating of blobs which cement the heartbeat that distinguishes the work. Rendered only as outlines that echo the human form rather than its fullness, simple symbols such as triangles, hearts, circles, and root-like tendrils convey complex meanings across the canvases like fragments of an unrecoverable memory. They mark and carry the intentional and the unresolved like two hands.
Across the series, the tension between chaos and stillness becomes palpable. Red lines slash through eroded white grounds; delicate gold contours stand before suspended root forms; scattered shapes accumulate into psychological weather. Even when the figure disappears entirely, its absence presses against the surface like breath on a window.
The title ‘ABANDONED’ acts as a lens through which each work resonates differently. It represents the abandonment not only of the self, but also of thoughts, emotional interiors and identities in the process of formation. Bussab’s canvases resemble the residue of private storms and public wars: the moment after rupture, and the moment before rebuilding.
ABANDONED is a body of work that reveals inner worlds left raw and unguarded. In these textured, spacious and fragmented scenes, Bussab sketches the outline of a self navigating its own erosion and the quiet, persistent desire to endure beyond it.
words by: Thandolwethu Gulwa
