BIOGRAPHY
Charl van Heerden is considered a multidimensional artist: painter, sculptor and furniture designer. The South African-born artist surprises again and again with new facets. His art is multidisciplinary, sustainable, functional and always inspired by his South African homeland.
His passion relates to authentic African materials, styles and forms, in order to make the authentic aesthetics of his homeland more present in international countries. Since 2002, the artist commutes between South Africa and Germany and founded his label here: “Van Heerden Design”. He opened his first store in Hamburg in 2005. From there his collections were distributed worldwide.
Between 2007 and 2010 he advised furniture and handicraft companies in Mali and Ghana in product design and prepared them for exhibitions in Europe. In 2013 he got involved in artistic design for disabled people in the Western Cape and developed art handicraft products with them.
Since 2015, van Heerden has dedicated himself to sustainable art: He designed and manufactured sculptures, furniture and lamps from old car tires and bicycle inner tubes for the “Maison et Objet” trade fair in Paris, among others. He designed 120 of his life-size sculptures on behalf of the Phillips Collection in New York. In 2017, he built lamps and furniture from recyclable fabrics for an eco-resort in Franshoek, South Africa. In the same year, he was commissioned to furnish the 16 hotel suites of the “Mala Game Lodge” with individual furniture creations.
Currently, Charl van Heerden lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. His latest works include sculptures, candelabras and tables made of a material he specially conceived of “wood dust”.
The large-format paintings were created in lockdown in his studio in Niederkassel. In the process, the artist was guided by reminiscences, associations and abstractions. What he translated onto canvas, Charl van Heerden calls the “patterns of his soul”.
