At the centre of Wim Botha's astonishing new solo exhibition, on at Stevenson in Cape Town, is a jumble of everyday materials describing what looks like a messy tragedy. Botha has carved pieces of a winged animal out of red wax and impaled them on lengths of raw pine or rested them on panes of glass covered with transparent adhesive film that obliquely mirror the rest of his exhibition.The corporeal component of this tumbledown sculpture, The Universal Truths Escape Me, may well be a swan. The work is a remake of the Greek myth of Leda and the swan.This is the second time Botha has revisited the ancient myth. In 2005 he showed a more anatomically composed version of the rape of Leda by Zeus in his earthly form as a swan.But even that sculptural composition was somehow off. The swan and human figure, both of them made from bone-meal and marble bound with resin, were broken and missing parts.Botha's interest in portraying malformed human and animal bodies using unusual materials is longstanding. In 1997, a year after he graduated from the University of Pretoria, Botha exhibited a life-size male figure carved out of paper documents.Titled Pros and Cons, his headless and armless figure was suspended in a cell in the former "native prison" of the Old Fort at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg. The insurer Sanlam recognised promise in the then unknown Pretoria artist and bought his work. Botha's collectability has since greatly increased.Aspire Auctions, the new auction house linked to businessmen Brian Joffe and Adrian Gore, is offering a 2014 Botha bust made from encyclopaedias on its inaugural auction at the end of this month. The tall sculpture, which appears to have been vandalised with black ink, is expected to fetch upwards of R250,000.Botha's current exhibition features a similar ink-stain bust, albeit that Nebula 11 (not afraid) is made from marble and far smaller. It portrays an unfinished female subject, her mouth frozen in surprise.These small works are Botha's most potent on his current show."I think our reading of the human form is entirely dependent on scale," says Botha. "An adult figure as a small object becomes a contemplative and conceptual marker."..