Gareth Vivian van Blerk was born in Cape Town, South Africa on 12 March 1971. After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 1995 he travelled widely before settling down in France in 1997. In Paris he befriended and began his collaboration with future gallery directors Chris Boïcos and Jennifer Robertson Norback.
From 1994 to 2018 Vivian produced an extraordinary number of photographs of architectural environments, which from 1999 were hand-built and incorporated painting, sculpted animals and flora, eccentric creatures and found objects. He also experimented with a variety of photographic techniques, including colored and scratched negatives and photomontage, printing his images on paper and also on glass. His photographs were usually created in series with wonderfully poetic titles – “Cow Travels in Time and Space”, “Hippopotamus and Destiny”, ‘I and my Chimney”, “Buffon’s Grandchildren”, “Coming Up for Air”. They were exhibited in Paris (Galerie Beckel Odille Boïcos, Chris Boïcos Fine Arts, Art Paris & Fotofever fairs), Chicago (Jennifer Norback Fine Art), Brussels (Johanthan F. Kuggel) and also London, Beirut (Artuel), Johannesburg and Istanbul.
In 2018 Vivian was inspired by an artist friend in Beirut to experiment with ceramic sculpture as an alternative to the ephemeral materials he had been using for building his photographic maquettes. He went on to develop his great skills as modeler in clay and porcelain, producing free-standing and relief sculpture of an extraordinary richness, variety and baroque complexity, shown in Paris by Michèle Hayem and Dominique Fiat.
On 9 July 2024 Vivian died peacefully, from a probable heart-attack, resting in his studio outside Paris. He was only 53 years old. His funeral will take place in early August in Paris.
He is sorely missed by his companion Diego Gutierrez-Trimino, his family, his many friends and all the art professionals who have worked with him over time.
Vivian has left behind an extraordinary oeuvre composed of his photographic series and his sculptures. The combination of exacting workmanship with great expressivity, delicacy and also humor in the evocation of his profound and melancholy imaginary worlds, assures him a unique place in the annals of contemporary art, one that very few living artists can claim.
Chris Boïcos
16 July 2024
