Biography
Bevan de Wet (b.1985) is an independent artist and printmaker based in Johannesburg. He graduated with a BFA with distinction from Rhodes University in 2008. From 2011 to 2016, de Wet worked at the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg as a professional print technician, collaborator, and academic facilitator. In 2016 he founded his own print studio called Eleven Editions, where he also collaborates with other artists and publishes various projects. De Wet regularly works with Phumani Archive Mill, a paper-making research unit at the University of Johannesburg, where he produces his handmade paperwork.
His practice centres around our increased sense of alienation from the natural environment and the spaces we inhabit. De Wet draws attention to the fragmented nature of our engagement with the world. His concerns around global and environmental future sustainability have led him to explore themes that range from the surface and the subdermal network to the formalist structures we impose on the landscape. Traversing the tensions between the organic and the constructed world, de Wet’s work is realised through etching, relief printing, papermaking, drawing, painting and installation.
De Wet has exhibited extensively, both locally and internationally, held 5 solo exhibitions including The Other Landscape (Lizamore Gallery, 2019), Drawing on Entropy (Hazard Gallery, 2018), New Forms: A Study of Broken Parallels (Candice Berman Gallery, 2017), and was included in Origins & Trajectories (Paris, 2016); the International Printmaking Alliance Exhibition (China 2016-17) amongst others. He has exhibited numerously at the Turbine Art Fair, FNB Joburg Art Fair, and the CT Art Fair. The artist’s work is held in a number of private and public collections including The Wits Art Museum, Nirox Foundation, the South African Embassy in Washington DC, Art Bank Collection South Africa, MOAD Museum of African Design, Exxaro, and the Ah Manson Foundation in Los Angeles.
De Wet’s awards include the Ampersand Foundation Fellowship (New York residency 2013); the Thami Mnyele Art on Paper award 2013; the ABSA L’Atelier Merit Award 2014 (Sylt Foundation residency, Germany), and an ImpAct Award for Visual Art from the Arts and Culture Trust 2014. De Wet also attended the Cill Rialaig Artists Residency in Ireland in 2017.
