Louis van den Heever was born on 15 October, 1977 in Pretoria, South Africa, where he grew up and matriculated in 1995. After a stint in the SA Navy and the scuba diving  industry in Simon’s Town, he spent a year abroad working in the UK. Back in SA in 2003, he decided to pursue art full-time. With no formal art training, early pencil and pastel works eventually turned into bold, comic- style paintings in acrylics.

As his technique, confidence and “voice” grew, his subject-matter steadily became more and more off-beat, humoristic and absurd, sometimes deliberately challenging what people view as fine art and what does or does not belong on walls.

Stylistically his recent paintings, sculptures and ink-drawings can be loosely described as pop- surrealism. His work portrays a diverse and jumble mixture of real and imagined experiences, lines from books, overheard conversations, stolen colour-schemes and patterns. Mostly it’s a tongue in cheek portrayal of human-hood: the banality, the outrageousness and everything in between that make up society and world. A recurring theme is the possibility of escaping or waking up from this world. The artworld and it’s many absurdities also feature regularly. He finds that exploring different mediums and techniques add to his vocabulary and story-telling ability. Trying to figure out how other artists achieve certain effects (even unsuccessfully) leads him to places he would never have gone on his own. A new technique will often inspire a whole new series of works. Exploring in this way makes his art an endless personal journey with no final destination and infinite exciting detours.

Louis has partaken in numerous group exhibition over the years.

He had a solo exhibition with ArtEye Gallery in JHB in April 2018.

Disclaimer:

Actual colours may vary slightly from the images shown, due to lighting when photographed, and colour variations in monitors and on phone screens.