References:
https://pieterlateganart.blogspot.com/2024/06/balance-weight.html
Bruce Hepburn Photography: https://mannequins.co.za/taking-recycling-new-level/
Hans Roodt Mannequins: https://www.hansboodtmannequins.com/
Mukurob / God’s Finger
Location: Southern Namibia, Namib Desert
Natural sandstone pillar, formed over millions of years by erosion
Became a national symbol because of its extreme balance and fragility
In 1955, Mukurob was officially declared a National Monument, recognizing its cultural, geological, and symbolic importance
Known locally and internationally as God’s Finger because of its vertical, pointing form
Collapsed in December 1988, likely due to natural erosion, weathering, and subtle ground movement Update: 4 February 2026 - Redesing of the Mukurob/ "Gods Finger" (See soon) Change 1. Space on the left side or right side off the stucture which you can see through that will be in the shape of the old Mukurob "Gods Finger" outlines that structre
- Pieter Lategan's Stonehedge Teory (See soon)
Keywords: balance, gravity, silence, time, erosion, loss, memory, impermanence Words - Pieter Lategan 5 February 2026 Pretoria South Africa
Ref Pieter Lategan
February 2026
South Africa
All
over my space
are words
a lot of words
Alls these words
are love words
are words
but the real mean
is that all of this
these words is all is
love words.
Pieter Lategan
5 February 2026
All
over my space
are words
a lot of words
All these words
are love words
are words
but the real meaning
is that all of this
these words
are all
love words.
Pieter Lategan
5 February 2026
South Africa
Silent Monumentalism in writing works through restraint rather than expression.
Key principles shown in this poem:
Repetition as gravity
Meaning descends instead of expanding. Each return removes explanation.
Sparse language
Only common, almost fragile words are used. Nothing performs. Nothing decorates.
Space as structure
The white space is not a pause between ideas — it is the architecture.
Inevitability over explanation
The ending does not argue its case. It arrives.
In this style, silence is not absence.
It is the material.
The poem stands like a small monument:
simple, exposed, and carrying more than it says.
This approach invites writers to:
remove emphasis instead of adding it
trust repetition instead of metaphor
allow meaning to settle rather than conclude
Silent Monumentalism changes writing by asking less language to carry more weight.
References:
Mukurob The Silent Monumentalism
|_ 19 Feb 2026 12:58 _|
https://mukurob.blogspot.com/2026/02/studio-materials-journal-priest-pieter.html
|_ 28 February 2026 _|
Working Notes / Visual Studies
This page is part of my working sketchbook. It is a place where I collect ideas, visual thoughts, and references while they are still raw and unfinished. It is not a gallery of completed work. It is an archive of things that catch my eye and stay with me — shapes, objects, surfaces, and moments that may later grow into drawings, designs, or artworks.
These images are here to help me think, not to explain anything yet.
The photographs come from a single session or from related observations. They show objects, forms, textures, and arrangements that interest me because of how they sit in space and how they relate to each other.
What draws me here is not decoration or story, but:
distance
The feeling is quiet, observational, and structural. I am looking at how forms exist, how they hold space, and how they create tension or calm simply by being there.
These are the questions I carry into the next drawing or design session:
What is the visual relationship between these forms? (weight, balance, repetition, spacing)
Can these references become compositional studies for drawings, paintings, or bag designs?
Are there patterns or structures starting to appear that I want to develop further?
Which images carry feeling or atmosphere without needing words, just through form and composition?
This page points toward a way of working that is becoming clearer to me:
Simplifying observed forms into quieter, more structural compositions
Focusing on presence rather than illustration
Letting shape, weight, and spacing do the work instead of narrative
Building a visual language that is calm, restrained, and consistent
Rather than telling stories, I am interested in how forms stand, how they relate, and how they hold space.
This is a working page. These images are not conclusions. They are material for future drawings, designs, and studies — especially for my bag designs and related work.
More notes, sketches, and reflections will follow as this work grows.
Image 1
This series of images explores how light, glass, and proximity can transform a familiar object into abstract visual design. By photographing chandeliers from below and at very close range, the focus shifts away from the object itself and toward pattern, repetition, reflection, and structure. Diamond-cut glass elements react differently to light depending on angle, distance, and intensity, creating unexpected decorative motifs and new visual rhythms.
The decision to move the camera closer removes background context and allows light to become the primary design tool. What would normally function as interior lighting becomes an abstract study of form, texture, and illumination. Although the glass elements are often identical, light introduces variation, complexity, and movement, turning repetition into visual richness.
These images are not intended as documentation of objects, but as part of an ongoing sketchbook process — a way of thinking through design, abstraction, and visual language. This body of work remains in progress and serves as a foundation for future explorations in drawing, composition, and material-based design.
Here the frame is not decoration.
It must hold the image like a memory window.
I imagine a deeper frame, almost like a box or a shadow gap, where the painting does not sit on the surface but is set back inside the structure. This creates a distance between the viewer and the image. The edge of the frame becomes a threshold, not just a border.
The effect is important:
The painting feels like something you are looking into, not just looking at.
The space between the frame and the image becomes psychological space.
The viewer feels: I am entering this image with my own thoughts.
This kind of frame supports projection, memory, and interpretation. The meaning does not sit on the surface of the painting. It happens in the space between the viewer and the image.
For materials, I am not thinking about wood at all. I am thinking about glass or metal — something architectural, restrained, and quiet. No ornament. No decoration. Just structure.
This kind of frame supports Narrative Monumentalism because it turns the painting into a place for inner narrative, not a decorative object on a wall.
More about Narrative and Silent Mounumental Frames click here:
by Pieter Lategan, 2026
For me, Hiroshima mon amour is not just a film. Its opening taught me something important about how images can work before they become a story.
The first minutes of the film are not built like a normal beginning. There is no clear scene, no simple introduction. Instead, there is a sequence of images placed next to each other: fragments, close-ups, ruins, bodies, traces of memory. These images do not explain themselves. They are held next to each other like frames, and only later does meaning begin to form in the viewer.
This way of working is very close to what I am trying to do in my own work.
In my sketchbook notes from January 2026, I am already thinking about form, presence, structure, and how images sit in space. I am not trying to paint stories. I am trying to create conditions where something can be experienced before it is explained.
In Hiroshima mon amour, the images come before understanding. They exist first as presence. Only afterwards does the mind begin to connect them. This is exactly how I think about the painting of The Priest.
The frame of the painting is not just a border. The frame is part of how the image is held in space. The silence around the figure, the emptiness, the distance — all of this is part of the work.
If I think about the painting through Narrative Monumentalism, then the priest is not a character in a story that I explain. He becomes a figure onto which the viewer can project their own thoughts.
The space around him becomes a kind of field of memory.
The viewer starts to ask:
Who is he?
Why is he here?
What does his posture say to me?
The meaning does not happen on the canvas. It happens inside the viewer.
This is what I mean by Narrative Monumentalism: the image stands like a monument, and the narrative grows inside the person who looks at it.
If I approach the painting through Silent Monumentalism, I remove even more. I do not give narrative hints. I do not decorate the space with explanations. I reduce the work to presence.
The priest is not a character in a story.
He is a form in space.
The space around him is not background.
It is part of the work.
Here I don’t ask: “What does this mean?”
I ask: “What does this allow the viewer to experience?”
Silence, distance, weight, stillness.
This is close to what the opening of Hiroshima mon amour does: it lets images exist before they explain themselves. It lets presence come before meaning.
My paintings are not meant to tell stories. They are meant to create a space where presence can be felt.
The posture of the priest, the emptiness around him, the restraint of the composition — these are not narrative elements. They are conditions.
His posture is gravity.
The space is silence.
The lack of story is presence.
Whether I work with Narrative Monumentalism or Silent Monumentalism, the idea stays the same:
Images and forms are not explanations.
They are places where experience can happen.
Read More Click Here
