The Partisan Review is the name of an influential but now defunct American literary journal. The name usefully suggests the orientation of this review, because Paul Edmunds is a friend of mine. For a while, he was also a work colleague, a dependable spoke in the wheel of online art magazine artthrob.co.za. Speaking of wheels, Edmunds is a keen cyclist. It is not unusual to see the Cape Town-based artist around the City Bowl on his bicycle, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt.
PAUL EDMUNDS
 A graduate of the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, Edmunds won the Volkskas Atelier Award (now Absa L'Atelier) in 1992. His current show, Array, is on until March 24 at:
Art on Paper Tel: (011) 726-2234
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When I meet him at Johannesburg's Art on Paper gallery he is decked out in one of these, a green shirt emblazoned with the words "De Waal Park". The Oranjezicht common is a short walk from where he lives with his wife, illustrator and designer Heather Moore.
Balancing on the apex of a ladder placed in the centre of the gallery, Edmunds drills a hole into the ceiling, then another and another. He seems to enjoy the labour.
Stepping down, he tells me that this is where he will display his new sculpture.
A branch-like object made from telephone wire, this work looks nothing like the geometrically precise objects shown on his last show at Joćo Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town.
In fact, Span is the extreme opposite of Froth, the laser-cut, grid-like structure that intrigued viewers so nearly two years ago. For starters, it is handmade from 4 000 strands of wire. Another obvious difference is its form. Edmunds flinches when I use the word organic.
"I hate using the word organic," he says. "It sounds like a health shop."
He prefers to describe his work as if reading the weather. Where his last show was "a bit cold and modernist", his current exhibition, his first solo outing in Johannesburg, is "definitely warmer". If there is something laboured about his description, read it as indicative of Edmunds' assiduous manner. Not only must things look right, they must sound right too.
"I spend a long time on my titles," he admits. "I have to get it exactly right. I find that titles sit with works, or have a particular relationship with them; they can offset or play off each other. In fact, I am not 100% sure I've got the titles right for this show, especially the blind embossing."
Titled Seal, the work shares much in common with a large, monochromatic linocut and a multicoloured wire sculpture, both titled Fan (pictured). Quizzed about their hard-to-describe, if vaguely organic form, Edmunds admits to his own uncertainty.
"The linocut looks like a kidney or a brain or a lung," he says. "I was more interested in the software of the branching structures, like what would happen if you took a line and moved it 20 degrees, then split the line."
The idea of mucking about with a line, of playfully taking it for a walk, is nothing new to Edmunds. A few years ago, he astounded viewers with a huge red linocut. Titled The Same But Different, the work featured a single line snaking across the surface of a piece of paper. The New Museum in New York bought one, as did art dealer Warren Siebrits, who described it as an "outstanding" graphic.
Looking around the gallery, I ask Edmunds about the modest display, just five works.
"Maybe people will think I've been lazy in Cape Town," he laughs. It is not the case, he says, raising and lowering his hand to indicate the quantity of rejected versions and prototypes lying in his Woodstock studio. Perhaps all this unseen frustration helps explains why the artist ends our interview on such a game note. "I am confident in my work."
