Wonder, In the Karoo..(Outshooring), 2025

Wonder Marthinus

AVA Exhibition: FROZEN TALES (Group Show) | 24.04.25 - 05.06.25

Wonder Marthinus is a painter living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. Marthinus’ works have been included in multiple local and international exhibitions and publications and the artist has been involved in numerous social outreach initiatives. Recent solo exhibitions include Malerei at Kunstverein Schallstadt (2013) and the Greatmore Studios 10th Year Celebration at the Irma Stern Gallery (2010). Recent group shows on which Marthinus has shown include The Artist’s Prism at Eclectica Modern (2015) and The Lookout by the AVA Gallery at the Cape Town Art Fair (2013). The artist has been involved in various outreach projects in Cape Town around issues of homelessness, justice and reconciliation, child abuse and mental health.

Marthinus currently works in his home studio in Bo-Kaap, Cape Town. His works consider abstract concepts of reality, time, place and actuality. Reflecting these concepts, the paintings themselves range from being completely abstract to abstract-expressionist in style. Over the last several years, Marthinus has been working in Cape Town and Germany (Freiburg). The artist has mentally stored images from this experience and draws upon them in the creation of his paintings. Some of these images include physical photographs and drawings, while others are memories. By drawing on these images, the artist plays with the idea of eluding time, place and actuality in his work in order to ‘map’ new scenes and landscapes.

On FROZEN TALES (2025):

“Inspired by the expansive landscapes of the Karoo during a GO Residency in Oudtshoorn, a partnership with KKNK 2025 curated by Lisa Grobler, I developed the concept for “Frozen Landscape,” an exhibition invited by Sonia Martins Mateus for the AVA Gallery 2025. My experience of the Karoo—its immense space, a sky in awh, and the shifting colors across layered mountain ranges—ignited a desire to explore the isolation and solitude of objects within this vastness. I previously connected with Sonia Mateus in Cape Town in 2023 and exhibited with her in “The Invisible Thread,” curated by Swain Hoogervost at the AVA Gallery in 2023.”

Website: https://www.wondermarthinus.com