Echoes of Presence – Between Shadow and Light, Alliance Française, Pretoria

Echoes of Presence brings together Lothar Böttcher and Caitlin Greenberg in a collaborative exhibition that is not a glass show — it is a conversation through the material about what we hold, what gets muffled, and what we make visible.

Two glass artists. Two enquiries. One shared material that reveals as much as it conceals.

Greenberg gives presence to the phrases we bury — “sorry,” “it’s fine,” “never mind” — suspending text within glass where it blurs, surfaces, and retreats. Böttcher works from opposite ends of time — capturing the shadows of carved crystal beasts on photographic paper, placing sculptural TV screens within South African landscapes, and assembling anthropomorphic figures from studio offcuts that echo sculptures made 40,000 years ago.

One practice holds and mutes. The other reveals and animates. Both use light and glass to catch what would otherwise slip away.