EYE-CATCHING ARTWORKS ARE GOOFY WITH GALL
When you start spinning a goofy yarn that keeps an audience hanging on your lips like a good bar-fly taleteller does, it is important to stick to and polish the details of that fantasy. Keeping a merry kind of suspense to the narrative is important – and, if you do a follow-up act, you'd better be better than the first time around.
Well, the good news is that the off-the-wall Platter patter and pictures continue – and much the better for it. We're all eyes and ears for the extending tale of Life is Very Interesting, which now looks more solid as a "screenplay" of and visual meditation on follies faced, followed and found.
A number of the now familiar characters of honkies, heroes and hangers-on are back, and one gets the feeling that Platter has found it in his heart to give each a better opportunity at doing what they are best at, whether good or nasty or simply dorky.
In other words, they have been given better roles in the performance. This is pleasing for those rapt in his unfolding scenario of existential discovery, as well as, obviously, for the likes of Cat Blofeld, the World Dominatrix, The Zebras (from Outer Space) and Dirty Harry the Croc.
Newcomers to the show, such as the terrifying Yakuza Penguins and Desiree, the Femme Fatale go-go girl, make impressive debuts – and we're bound to see more of them as the grand narrative grows.
Something like the verve and tease of early Keith Haring underpins the tight idiom that the artist works with, but he also keeps a steady hand so that it doesn't spin out into mere comic silliness. Call it goofy with gall, and pretty eye-catching.
The doggedness of the fine large drawings of "story-board scenes" from the visual saga, painstakingly coloured by handstrokes is striking, and all the better for bringing the fantasy back to tactile earth. Look closely at the way the colour is driven on to the paper. It makes the pictures zing.
Technically, these seem more assured than before, but the impact is, of course, in the story they tell – and that is a darn good yarn.
Melvyn Minnaar
Extract from: Minnaar, Melvyn. “Eye-catching Artworks Are Goofy With Gall.” Cape Times, 5 October 2005, Page 13 (Arts)
