Page 148 - Bulletin 13 2009

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This was followed by one in October 1969 at the Brevan Gallery in Cape Town. It drew
record crowds, 2500 people having visited it by the end of its extended run. This time

Dubow offered more praise: the exhibition “….marks an enormous improvement …….his
direction has become clarified ….. his handling of his materials much more convincing.”

On display were two approaches. One was based on circular compositions with multiple

foci in which use was made of a variety of nail head types as well as copper spheres (made
from cistern floats). The other was more subtle, and, Dubow thought, therefore more

successful in that the nails were arranged to produce directional patterns, undulating
surfaces, and patterns of shadow – all of which gave the compositions a kinetic quality,

somewhere between the third and fourth dimensions, especially when moving light was
played across them or when one walked past them. “It’s a direction he should pursue

further”, Dubow advised. (Figs. 3.32 – 3.41). The atmosphere at the exhibition was

described by a Cape Times reporter on 4 October 1969:

City artist’s bang-up-to-date show

Cape Town artist Eduard Ladan hit the nail on the head last night with an
everybody-was-there opening of his exhibition of nail assemblage in the Brevan Gallery,
Burg Street.
Mr. Ladan, of Fish Hoek, has pioneered in the field of mosaics formed by the heads
of nails which are hammered into panels.
His aesthetic hardware provided a frame last night in which people came together to
discuss cultural topics. The whorls and whimsies of nail art had them hammering away at
widening circles of ideas.
In this hubbub of the avant garde the artist was one man who refused to be nailed
down. He listened, certainly, but he would not say that this or that interpretation of his
thumb-bruising work was correct.
Moving lights glinted on polished copper and steel nails.
An army sergeant – he was with a “mod” girl in forest-bird plumage – moved his
head this way and that as the arc of a lamp glittered across a mosaic. Next to him a white-
bearded man in a khaki suit and pink tie teetered back and forth on his heels as he gazed
through narrowed eyes at the panel.
Coming through the hi-fi like an undertow was the oom and twang of guitars.
The exhibition was opened by Professor Derek Crichton and will run till October 25.