Juul Kraijer is a very enigmatic artist that is cooperating with the Ars 06, taking part at the wonderful KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland . The ARS exhibition wants to be "an important review of contemporary art in the 21st century."
"ARS 06 concentrates on art’s role as a part of the human experience. The works will be accompanied by changing projects. The programme is varied and includes events, seminars, workshops and lectures, as well as a series of performances in the Kiasma Theatre."
About 40 artists from 20 countries will participate in the project.
Juul Kraijer is one of the artist participating. Kraijer has dedicated himself to drawing. His strange and unsettling works emanate a cool calm but also an underlying uncertainty and flaw. The work has attracted my attention for this delicate and almost ghostlike balance between the perfection of human form and the silent threat taking over it with no struggle. Kraijer website reflects the work very well and is easy to access and navigate. What an unsual artist with such a rich body of work.
Here's a bit of a text by the artist:
"The drawings are all done on the same kind of paper and in charcoal or - when colour is needed - pastel. Wiping and rubbing are occasionally used as techniques in their own right, just as important as drawing proper. Traces of earlier positions of heads and limbs are still visible, showing how the bodies obeyed the choreographer's guiding hand. In all drawings, the bounds of what is anatomically possible are exceeded. The female body, which in some of my drawings verges on androgynous, is remodelled into simple and elegant calligraphy - unnatural yet credible. The guiding principles in making these drawings are conciseness and reservation. To my feeling, these principles are not of my own choice; they seem to be dictated by the drawings themselves. Every drawing contains no more than what is strictly necessary. Everything that could provide time and space coordinates is absent.
The drawings are decidedly not representations of situations existing in reality. Rather, they are incarnations of frames of mind. The bodies are nude but neutral - vehicle rather than flesh. They remain in the domain of the spirit.
(...)
The drawings elude traditional iconography. In its place, use is made of physical sensations granting access to the inner mind. Human bodies are joined to animals or elements of a landscape. This fusion of incompatible entities has a matter-of-course calmness in spite of being enforced and creates a short-circuit in reason. For a short moment in time meaning can be perceived in a different way. This mechanism is analogous to that of imagery in language. Each drawing contains a trope: a simile or a metaphor. "
Recommended.
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