Vela Projects | Kash Out

Since graduating from the University of Stellenbosch in 2022, Boytchie (aka Phillip Newman) has made a name for himself as an expressionistic mark-maker, playful sculptor and improvisational draughtsman. Previous bodies of work have explored a myriad of themes, from coloured identity and cultural dislocation to love and heartbreak, life and death.

Capitalism is the subject of this exhibition. Its title, Kash Out, carries an array of connotations, from winning big at the gambling table to going broke at the end of the month, but the main inspiration comes from “Cash In Cash Out,” a song by Pharrell Williams, 21 Savage and Tyler, The Creator, for which the chorus goes:

Cash in, cash out, cash in, cash out
Cash out, cash out, cash out, cash out

A bottomless cycle of loss and gain, desire and lack, gluttony and hunger, is the fuel that fires the capitalist machine and represents the animating force in Boytchie’s body of work. Take the eponymous painting, for instance. Its base sketch depicts a red figure running with a bag of gold. The image is repeatedly worked over with sketches, splashes and trickles of paint, so that the final product feels explosive, voracious. As the artist states:

The figures exist in this endless state of hunger. Nothing is ever good enough. People just want stuff… and it doesn’t matter if it’s the corporate bosses or the average joe, there’s always more that could be had.

Distorted bodies and mangled faces, claw-like hands and box-like frames, ribs exposed and guns ablaze – these are the visual cues that make up the vernacular of Kash Out. Throughout, Boytchie is playing with contrast between warm and cold colours, such as deep red and icy blue in Severed Head, or emerald and fuschia in Sorry No Change. These colours are then steeped in overlays and backgrounds of bitumen, a charcoal-black, petroleum-based material that confers the consistency of tar. Its dark, matte viscosity perfectly captures the “underbelly of contemporary society” that is, at once, “sardonic and grim.” The sculptures, in turn, are lathered in bitumen and fashioned from offcuts of wood that have been intuitively (sometimes haphazardly) screwed together, producing deconstructed figures that confront the viewer with their twisted, contorted forms.

These symbolic postures are carried through in works like Scheming and Did You Hear That Sound, where the figures backs are seen to be hunched over like modern Atlases. All together, these figures serve as metaphors. For Boytchie they are the archetypes for late capitalism.

The fact that it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether the figure in question is a victim or a perpetrator of capitalist violence is testament to the fact that, in such a system, power relations may vary, but everyone is implicated or, at the very least, entrenched. From the genocide in Gaza to the lithium mines in Congo to the streets of Cape Town, poverty abounds, greed exacerbates, the relation continues to spiral unto itself: cash comes in, and cash goes out.

This show runs from 9 February - 23 March 2024.