Rina Stutzer’s work is difficult to sum up because it is in a constant process of becoming, the pieces evolving out of each other, often guided by intuitive impulses rather than some clean-cut philosophy or aesthetic. But her works bring together some recent preoccupations, which include an interest in the corvidae or corvids (crows) and their relationship to the human, and an interest in exploring manifestations of and possibilities for ‘the nomadic’.

Crows and magpies are said to be the most intelligent of bird species and Stutzer is interested in how they display characteristics that overlap with the human. They are known for their cunning, their capacity to prevaricate (an animal behaviour term for ‘lie’ or ‘mislead’), their attraction to shining objects and their proclivity to store food items and other objects for times of need. While Stutzer is not trying to anthropomorphise crows, she is using crows in her work as a metaphor for the human and the place of the human in the world – especially in the context of South Africa. Both are often maligned unfairly, both are misunderstood, their dexterity can be used for good or ill, depending on your perspective. We are reminded of Ted Hughes’s Crow poems – where the crow is infinitely adaptable, unpredictable, inexhaustible and capable of mischief. Here the crow also stands for the artist herself: both operate outside of society, both are subversive, they are tricksters playing around with the possibilities of reality.

The crow is also a nomadic creature – sometimes in flocks, sometimes solitary. A vagabond, surviving on leftovers, on other people’s rubbish. In this series of work, the image of the tent recurs. The tent, like the human body, is a place we inhabit on our journey through the world. It is a temporary dwelling, a place we can call home – but only up to a point. Here we have tents nesting in twigs like crows and the naked female form resting on a forest floor. The tent is also often explicitly yonic in many of these works (yonic being the female version of phallic). The bronze sculpture Infold Dwelling Place is both female genitals and tent. We are reminded of the emergence of the human into the world, the birth of a child – the human spirit moving from womb to world, belonging in neither, only ever visiting both. So too the female forms on the forest floor are between life and death, between the human and a state of nature, dwelling both internally and externally. Here the ‘spirit’ that makes us human, gives us identity, is in a state of transition, moving between different realms, impossible to pin down.

Stutzer is interested in decay as a mode of renewal or regeneration. In several of these works she is painting with acid on a copper plate. These patinas will oxidise and change through time. The alluring detailed images we find today will not remain as they are but will evolve – in terms of colour and form. Stutzer likes making works that are not fixed, that are perishable – works whose identity is themselves ambiguous (as with the crow) and transitory, provisional (as with the nomad).

All that we know of the world is that we are passing through it. We are alive here, now. Stutzer urges us to have greater expectations for ourselves. She asks of us that we feel deeper, open ourselves more widely to the mystery of the present, understand that we must be gentle with one another because everything is delicate and provisional. This is why her work defies clear analysis: it works against clean-cut versions of the world and instead brings us back to the mystery that runs through all things.

-Craig Higginson

Rina Stutzer (born 1976) completed her BAFA at the University of Pretoria in 1999 and went on to complete her MAFA at the same university in 2007. After graduation, she started lecturing part-time in Painting and Drawing in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Pretoria.  She works as a full-time artist, focusing on her own creative process and production, investigating both sculptural form and painting. In her recent paintings, she has been exploring ‘painting’ with acid as an ever-changing image on copper plate as well as on paper. During the patination and subsequent oxidisation processes (due to the acid content and its reaction to the metal), the original images continue to be altered and thus change in appearance.

Stutzer has achieved a number of accolades, including the Bettie Cilliers-Barnard Bursary from the University of Pretoria for excellence in painting (1999) and the SASOL New Signatures Art Competition: People’s Choice Award (1999). She was awarded the first prize in the Ekurhuleni Fine Arts Award Competition (2007) and achieved a distinction in Painting for her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Pretoria in the same year. In 2012, she was awarded the Rendezvous: Focus Painting Bursary. This prestigious bursary afforded her the opportunity to attend  a painting residency in France in 2013. In 2013, Stutzer also enjoyed a residency at Nirox and the following year she participated in the Sydney Art Fair and was a part of 20 Stellenbosch. In 2016, her work Pinned Transitory II was exhibited at Reporting from the Front at the Architectural Biennale’s South African Pavilion in Venice, Italy.

She has participated in a number of group exhibitions since 2000 in South Africa as well as in Great Britain and in the Netherlands. Stutzer spends her time between her home studio and Dionysus Sculpture Works, which she runs alongside her partner.