Andrew Putter
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, 1965
Lives in Cape Town, South Africa

Training:
1990: HDE, University of Cape Town, South Africa
1989: Ad.Dip [Painting] University of Cape Town, South Africa
1987: BAFA, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Recent group exhibitions:
1993: The Kunst Heimat Kunst, Graz, Austria
1993: The AIDS and Safe Sex, SAAA, Cape Town, South Africa
1993: The Bride in Art, The Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa.
1993: Heart of the Virus, Arts Strip, Cape Town, South Africa


At the Johannesburg Biennale venue Putter installed his works in a
wall closet in order to explore in a very overt way his identity
as a gay man in South Africa and to question stereotypical notions of
what constitutes masculinity and femininity.

In Gene Pool Putter depicts the male subject as a violent duality.
Focussing on the period of adolescence when boys are forced to
identify with the stereotype of macho masculinity, he depicts, in
his words, "what men drown when society prevents them from
expressing that which is (considered) feminine"

According to Putter, he is less interested in "art as it is currently
practised, displayed and consumed than in how the kinds of
knowledge art generates might be integrated into an approach to
life" (pers comm, Feb. 1995)