Mark Rautenbach is a Cape Town artist who has also worked as Mark Splendid, Mark Maria and Splendid Miriam. He works in a variety of media, including material which is considered waste matter, as well as textiles and paper. Rautenbach’s practice is often process-based, and draws on traditional craft techniques.

For Rautenbach, matter is the means he uses to express memory and meaning. He looks at the unseen forces and tensions which are inside and in between visible material things. The textural languages he uses guide his creative procedures by inviting consideration of their inherent potential and associations. Through ritualistic repetition – drawing on the arcane and everyday, the collective and personal – Rautenbach uses his meditative works to embody psychological and cultural patterns, giving form to invisible spaces. Physical conglomerations – whether of thread, steel safety pins or glass – symbolise emotional connections.

By renegotiating found objects and materials from shops, recycle bins, gifts and disassembled artworks, Rautenbach manifests forms which exhibit his alchemical journey: his commitment to be present with all things even when they are uncomfortable. To delve into, uncover, bind and cocoon his being – to transform into something beyond expectations.

Rautenbach lectured Design for a number of years at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), and education recurs as a theme in his work, along with identities born out of narratives – represented through yarn. Rautenbach has exhibited at the Iziko South African National Gallery, Everard Read, Open 24 Hrs, Spier, David Krut Projects and Ebony/Curated, among others.