Tim Dempers

In Tim Dempers’ work, time becomes the primary medium; the artist’s singular enquiry that of notating its passing. How might one trace the duration of a gesture? The hours necessitated in collecting, treating, and drying seaweed? The instant between firing a bullet and the moment of impact? To Dempers, each composition reveals itself as the residue of time spent, a distillation of suspended moments and accumulated actions.

Process is central to Dempers’ temporal enquiry; his studio recast as laboratory. Here, the artist extends the materials with which he works, bending them to serve unlikely ends. So transformed, they appear other than what they once were. Kelp becomes gestural brush marks, becomes cladding, becomes textile. A pock-marked sheet of steel, glass, timber, or carbon fibre becomes braille, an exploded bullet, a flower. Such materials, Dempers suggests, present themselves to his process, much as the titles later suggest themselves to the finished works. There is no message or theme to direct the works’ making, only a driving curiosity and commitment to the discovery of something new and a new way of trying to understand painting.

Tim Dempers works at the intersection of the disciplines of painting, architecture, and yacht design. He graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in 2008 and worked with Cecil Balmond at the Advanced Geometry Unit at Arup in London. He has collaborated with Gill Schmid Design in NYC on several yacht design projects and previously worked from his studio in Shoreditch, London, before relocating to Liguria, Italy, and later returning to Cape Town.

Dempers has exhibited his paintings locally and abroad and was a finalist in the 2019 SASOL New Signatures Art Competition. He currently lives and works in Kommetjie, Cape Town.