Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to present the works of internationally acclaimed Dutch artist Juul Kraijer. This is the first ever solo exhibition by the artist in India and will take place from the 3rd of December, 2010 until the 5th of January, 2011 at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-178 Okhla Phase 1, New Delhi 110020. This exhibition is supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, with additional support from the Embassy of The Netherlands.
Forty-one-year-old Kraijer is globally recognized forher works that are expressions of the experiential subconscious (inspired by texts like Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception) and display a range of assimilative influences from the east and west.
A graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts, Rotterdam (1989-1994) Kraijer’s drawings, sculptures and videos have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2001), the Gemeentenmuseum, The Hague (2006) and the Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen (2009) and in galleries in Amsterdam, Milan, Cologne and Copenhagen. Her work has also been shown in ARS 06- Sense of the Real at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki and later acquired for their collection.
With over 300 drawings to her credit, Kraijer describes her works as being “marked by monomania.” It is the female form that dominates the frames of her work, in frozen, contemplative and dream-like poses. In a text Simile Kraijer sheds light on her working process, “Unlike those artists who from time to time venture to take a new turning, I seem to be the type of artist who recognizes a small field as his or her domain, to be explored in depth and detail.”
In this particular exhibition she presents works from 2007, moving beyond the drawings in crayon, ink and charcoal, to include a range of media like sculptures, photographs and videos. Kraijer’s works elude traditional iconography, even as they present the mystical, transient world of interactions between humans and nature. The subjects, according to the artist, remain independent from the spectator with expressions of intense concentration which is wholly turned inwards. With an underlying tone of being wounded, their postures display a tension like that of compressed springs.
It is apparent while looking at the body of work exhibited that the artist assumes the role of the composer. Repeatedly erasing and rubbing her charcoal drawings, the artist allows her process to be visible, “showing how the bodies obeyed the choreographer’s guiding hand.”
A 2010 untitled bronze sculpture captures the essence of fusion. Two women are joined like Siamese twins from the head. Their meditative closed eyes display the frozen calm façade, as in Kraijer’s earlier drawings, successfully drawing the observer to the objects inner mind.
The maturation of her work will be very apparent in this exhibition as we notice a departure from her earlier styles where different ethnic groups were depicted owing to her wide travels and experiential influences. With the female form still dominating her frames, Kraijer mentions “The ‘girls’ have matured into young women and their Japanese features have disappeared. They have what may be called a ‘universal face’; it is no longer possible to ascribe them to one particular ethnic group.”
With drawings remaining her primary medium she has gained other training from a range of grants awarded to her. One of which was a two month long grant to learn traditional Indian wood carving in 2002. With three Dutch art prizes to her credit her works are a part of many prestigious collections including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Helsinki), Museum Kunst Palast (Dusseldorf), Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Museum Moderner Kunst (Vienna) among others.
