These powerful works from the early 1980's (still signed 'Izak de Villiers') represents a desperate period in South Africa's history, a time of escalating violence. The country was declared to be in a state of emergency. All the people of South Africa, Black and White, felt the effects.
Zak Benjamin experienced the time as a personal state of emergency, too.
The small, tired, horned creature at bottom right is tired of fighting, tired of life. Like other young artists of the 1980's, Benjamin is sick of it all, and sees very little hope for the future. He had come to the end of the road. The painting Endless Sunset expresses this. The tired, horned creature rages ineffectually in another work, Chips. When one compares Ystervis, above, to 220V, one sees the artist's spiritual transformation. The rage is spent, the demons no longer bare their teeth and howl center stage.
