Echoes of the End: Four South African Artists on Faith, Mysticism and a World in Quiet Decline

What if the end of the world isn’t a single dramatic event, but something slower, quieter and already underway? Echoes of the End brings together four South African artists, Ferdinand Kotze, Johan Els, Steven Jones and Ilse Kleyn, in a shared meditation on faith and mysticism as contemporary society gradually unravels.

When: 14 November – 28 November 2026
Where: Art.b Gallery, The Library Centre, Carl Van Aswegen St, Bellville

About the exhibition

Rather than imagining a dramatic apocalypse, Echoes of the End reflects on the slow erosion of certainty, meaning and spiritual cohesion. The apocalypse here is a lived condition: ongoing, insidious and psychological.

Through painting, sculpture and mixed media, the artists explore how traces of belief and ritual persist in a world in steady decline. Their works move between the sacred and the psychological, the material and the metaphysical, revealing moments of reverence within decay. The exhibition suggests that even as the world deteriorates, faith and mystery endure, quietly resonating through the cracks of what remains.

Meet the artists

Ferdinand Kotze
Kotze works primarily in oil painting, video and audio. His post-digital aesthetic interrogates memory, spirituality and the human experience in landscapes marked by decline and transformation. For this exhibition, he explores fragmented memory and spiritual decay through digital abstraction and post-human landscapes, tracing human traces of faith and identity within modern ruins.

Johan Els
Els creates sculptural works in wood, ceramics and stained glass. His art reinterprets sacred architecture and ritual, exploring belief, mysticism and the metaphysical through material form. His contributions draw on the symbolic power of light, offering sculptural meditations on belief and ritual.

Steven Jones
Jones works across ceramics, drawing and film, investigating mystical and apocalyptic themes. His practice blends symbolism, material experimentation and spiritual inquiry, reimagining spiritual revelation in contemporary contexts.

Ilse Kleyn
Kleyn’s oil paintings focus on the divine presence within everyday life. Her luminous work reveals God’s quiet faithfulness in fleeting, ordinary moments, offering a stillness and a meditative counterpoint to societal decline.