“WHO wants to live on Mars?" asks Karel Nel, as we talk about the vastness of the cosmos and the billions of stars twinkling in the night sky.
Elon Musk and his coterie may try to do so, but no thanks. The irony: destroy the earth and then go find other planets to destroy them as well.
Mars is a dusty, cold, desert world with a thin atmosphere. Sounds like Koekenaap in winter, my mother's place of origin.
It is estimated that there are 2 billion galaxies, more than 90% of them too nebulous for existing telescopes to observe. Karel knows a lot about these matters.
For the past 20 years he has been the project artist for COSMOS (The Cosmic Evolution Survey), the most comprehensive astronomy project to date. Its purpose is to measure two square degrees of the sky.
With superpowerful telescopes, they look deep into the past to study the cosmos as it originated and looked like in the beginning – and how it has evolved to the present time.
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Karel works closely with teams of astrophysicists with the aim, among other things, of getting to the core of what the universe is. He has attended numerous conferences in New York, Kyoto, Munich and Paris.
The cliché question: Does he think there is life or another society up there somewhere? He takes a sip of his mineral water and looks towards Three Anchor Bay.
Waves break and the sky is blue and boundless. “The universe is about 13,8 billion years old. From what I have seen, the enormity of it all, the endlessness, I would say that it would be naive to think that there is not some form of other living being up there."
***
Karel is not only bothered with the stars. He has been an artist for four decades now, was appointed as the senior advisory curator at the Norval Foundation in 2018 and lives in his childhood home, which is like a work of art in itself.
Friends say he is an excellent vegetarian cook, a great storyteller, cosmopolitan, endless traveller and he also dresses well. An old-world esthete.
“Yes, I do have a vegetarian kitchen at home, but when I go out, I will eat meat, just not fish." He is munching on a hamburger while talking about his childhood.
He especially loves curry, because his mother used to make it so often when he was a child. She came from a broken home and was raised by an Indian woman.
Karel was born in Pietermaritzburg in the old Natal. His parents were teachers at a mission school. They were not particularly religious and did not like what was happening in the country.
The plan was to pack their bags and emigrate to Canada. Then someone told them: “You can't just leave the country until you try to make a change."
Then they moved to Welkom, which he describes as dull, desolate and dusty. Almost like Mars, I guess.
His father, although a qualified teacher, became a mineworker. Then the management hauled him up from underground to the surface, where he began to do training.
He worked hard to equalise the differences in wages between white and black workers and spoke out against segregation at work. His mother taught philosophy and education.
“They read a lot, on any subject. As children we were never bored, my sister and I went on flights of imagination between the pages of books," says Karel.
His parents worked hard and they lived frugally. Later they moved to a large smallholding in Rivonia, where he still lives.
Two Japanese prints in their house enchanted the young Karel and slowly his interest in art began to develop. He always had pencils with him and did drawings every day.
“I was dyslexic and deeply unhappy at school," he says. “Art was the focus of my life. My mother could see I was unhappy.
“She arranged for me to take art classes. I was hungry for information about art, I wanted to know more and more. I went looking for mentors, sniffed them out," he says.
He made contact with art historian Esmé Berman and they became friends. She was the author of the famous and seminal book Art and Artists of South Africa – An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary and Historical Survey of Painters, Sculptors and Graphic Artists since 1875.
He also started hanging out at the Goodman Gallery and that's how he met the owner, Linda Givon. A woman who especially befriended African artists and marketed their work.
Her love for their art also lit a light in Karel. He is a specialist expert on new and more established artists from our country and the rest of Africa.
Sculptor Edoardo Villa became a teacher and friend and Karel eagerly absorbed his knowledge. The logical consequence was that he went off to study art at the University of the Witwatersrand.
He earned money as a study supervisor to support himself as a student. Karel also worked for pocket money at a nursery. After Wits he studied sculpture at the St. Martin's School of Art in London.
“The furthest I've ever been was Cape Town," he says. “We visited there as children with our parents, it felt like another country," he says.
“And then I arrived in London. Goodness!”
After London he returned to Wits to teach. Then a Fulbright scholarship came and he went to the University of California Berkeley, in San Francisco.
“Here I studied for three years and my interest was in how metaphors are used between art and technology. Silicon Valley was just bursting at the seams, I was really just there at the right time for my type of research and interests.
“It was a watershed moment. Studies have been done to see how computers affect the neural pathways in your brain. I learned about the evolution of our species in tandem with technology.
“Politics and religion force you in certain ideological directions. I'm always suspicious of that. The idea of a hell and a heaven is so simplistic. The church focuses on guilt and fear. But it is ‘clarity of thought' that actually binds us together," he says.
“By the way, people think art and science are different, but both question the nature of our reality in their own way. We are the only species that can ‘translate' our experiences, our ventures, into numbers, art and photography."
He has just returned from Japan, and says he has never experienced such kindness as there. It is also at the University of Tokyo where he collaborates with astronomers to get to the deep, deep heart of the universe. (Read here about how it has influenced his art.)
How does it feel to stare into the great night through a telescope? I ask. “It feels like everything is awesome and eternal. You feel overwhelmed, almost unstable," he says.
I wonder about black holes, which I have read make noises. Yes, we are like the cells in the smallest ants, I think. Even smaller. Listen.
I ponder over our insignificance and ask him about death. What awaits us? In my mind's eye, space is a place full of souls. Perhaps an extension of our unconscious? Eternity?
“If this is all, I'm fine with it. But I think our bodies are temporary shelters.
“I believe in continuity. I have had students with so many almost superhuman skills that I have thought, how is this possible, look how young you are, where did this come from?”
He believes in kindness and a deep respect for each other. This is what he felt when he was teaching. Our lives should be a creative process.
Many diverse people had shaped and influenced him, but he had close friendships with writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Edward Said, Susan Sontag and Mark Behr. One can imagine how liberating it must have been to have conversations with them.
I ask him when his birthday is. “I don't celebrate birthdays, I'm not going to tell you, I don't believe in it. I will tell you how old I am, but not my birthday." He was born in 1955.
***
Karel suspects that his work is better known abroad than in his own country. He has exhibited and lectured on it in London, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Tokyo and Copenhagen.
At some of these places (and many others) he gathers dust (real dust!) for his artworks. He uses a variety of materials, including ochre, volcanic glass, sand and specific types of dust collected from historically important sites.
In 2002 he went to New York where he collected dust and rubble from the destroyed World Trade Centre. Hiroshima was another destination. He has gathered dust in Soweto, at places where the 1976 uprisings began, and at the Bastille in France.
“The latter two were symbolic for me – the birth of democracy. I incorporate these materials into some of my artworks."
From stars to dust – his creative spirit bounces from the bottom to the top, high, high up, into nothingness.
***
In 2018 Karel started working for the Norval Foundation as a curator. He spends a lot of his time between his home and the impressive art gallery of the foundation in Tokai, Cape Town.
Quickly packing his bags and travelling between places comes naturally to him. There is no time to sit still for too long.
Currently, there are four major exhibitions at the Norval, and all are world-class. I visited it on a Sunday morning.
Each exhibit has in-depth information on a poster on a wall that tells you everything you need to know. Who remembers that the famous photographer Norman Seeff was born in Johannesburg, where he qualified as a doctor?
His photos of The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Cher, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson as well as artist Andy Warhol, film director Martin Scorsese and Apple founder Steve Jobs are known to millions of people.
Then there is the enormous Alexis Preller exhibition. It took Karel six years to track down the works and compile an exhibition. The packaging, shipping and insurance for each individual piece is a colossal project. Read here about two more exhibitions at the Norval Foundation.
Sitting at the end of a meal with a man of so many interests and talents is an almost metaphysical and alchemical experience. Your soul and mind are bent, moulded, you are shaped into art like a sculpture.
Karel insists on paying. I was so busy writing everything down, I didn't get to my meal.
His last words: “Eat your food, it's getting cold!"
Kindness, I thought. Deeds, not words. Actions, not words.
♦ VWB ♦
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