MJ Lourens
MJ Lourens was born in 1973, in Pretoria.
His landscapes are non-specific yet all-encompassing, universally recognisable scenes. Lourens has recently moves to Cape Town from Pretoria where, alongside his painting, he had become involved in filming and documentary work, as well as sculpting.
Lourens’s striking and atmospheric cityscapes have always been driven by the sombre beauty of the urban landscape at dusk. These landscapes serve as an expression of the way in which people organise and plot their existence.His juxtaposition of majestic skies and dimly-lit urban landscapes lends a unique perspective on how human intervention has changed our world. On a metaphorical level, his paintings hint at one of the central human dilemmas of the 21st century, evoking contradictory emotions in the viewer: familiarity and foreboding; nostalgia and estrangement. The comforting twinkle of our electrified cities, celebrating human technological advances, might finally be the source and signifier of a conquered environment and crumbling civilisation.
Lourens´s recent series of sculptures and monoprints might seem completely different from his more typical work; these artworks will leave viewers in no doubt as to the influence that Surrealism (Dali & Magritte in particular) has stamped on Lourens’s vision. Those familiar with his cityscapes should re-examine them, looking for their surrealist elements. If Dali’s landscapes combine the familiar with the uncanny & unknown, MJ Lourens rather gives us imagined views of the known.
