Luan Nel

I started using Instagram when we moved into our current home and where I keep my studio. We are incredibly fortunate to live in the area known as the City Bowl in Cape Town. We are situated on the foothills of Lion’s Head (the mountain immediately to the right of Table Mountain) We face directly East with Lion’s Head behind us which means we do not really have great sunsets as we discovered once we moved in, in the Spring of 2013. What I discovered however, was that we do experience spectacular sunrises. Night-owl that I am I found myself waking increasingly earlier, it was not long and I was awake every single day before sunrise. I take a photograph every morning, of the sunrise with the city below it, sometimes of the mountains, and then I post this to my Instagram account @luan_nel with the hashtag #luansview ... At the start this was done mainly because I was in utter awe of the sheer majesty in front of me. Cape Town is an incredibly beautiful city mainly because of its incredibly beautiful setting. As time progressed and my morning photograph session became more of a morning ritual it started taking on a similar role as meditation or prayer. One thing that one can say about this specific time of day, whether overcast or sunny, is that it is the one instant during any 24 hours that is, for most, completely hopeful. The day lies stretched out in front of you, untarnished, filled with hope.

I started incorporating some of these images in my larger art practice. They were in my mind as much about the sunrise and a view of the city and its setting as they were about my own subjectivities at the time of capturing the image. In the work presented I painted the morning scene in front of my studio as a cold front was gathering above the city when the sun was rising. It was spectacular. Unlike work of this nature that I had painted before the pandemic and lockdown, in this painting debris started to enter the atmosphere. Bits of abstract and stuff, some more recognizable than others, all suspended in mid-air, as if frozen in time. It mirrors my experience of the initial lockdown period as a strange space and time to be caught in. It is a kind of limbo one finds oneself in. The past seems like a dream and the future appears uncertain. Dates are cancelled one after the other or postponed until further notice. One after another whole countries started shutting down, the world is changing, at the moment we are seeing the possibilities that might be on our horizon but nothing is certain. Things are very much still up in the air.

BIO

Luan Nel matriculated from Die Kruin School of the Arts in 1989 with distinction.
In 1993 Luan Nel won the SASOL New Signatures competition.
Luan Nel received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1994. That same year he completed his Higher Diploma in Education (Post-Graduate) also from the same university in Johannesburg, South Africa. He started his own practice during this time with his first solo exhibition held in 1994 at the Johannesburg Planetarium.
Luan Nel participated in the residency program at the renowned Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 1998 and 1999 under the guidance of advisors Luc Tuymans, Dan Graham and Lisa Moore amongst others. He participated in a research residency at the Dutch Institute in Rome in 1999. In 2001 he participated in the inaugural outdoor sculpture and installation exhibition Lustwarande: Pleasure Garden, in Tilburg, The Netherlands, curated by Marianne Bruwer and Chris Driessen amongst such luminaries as Louise Bourgeois and Michelangelo Pistoletto. More recently in 2019/2020 he participated in the Spier Light Art Exhibition in Stellenbosch curated by Jay Pather and Vaughn Sadie. His work is represented in such collections as KPMG, The WITS Art Museum (WAM) the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Spier, SANLAM and the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
In November 2020 Luan Nel along with his partner and spouse Neil Pendock started NEL, his artist owned and directed art gallery in Cape Town. Nel also wrote for the daily Die Burger, he writes for the magazine The Lake and various online publications.
Luan Nel currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.