Karianne Krabbendam

Karianne Krabbendam makes stone torsos in which the body reveals the character of an ‘animated structure’ that sometimes almost loses its recognisability. The weight of the stone determines the structure, while the animation seems to defy gravity.

These bodies appear to be set in time and space. They have apparently been stopped in an indefinable domain, somewhere between animated awkwardness and modest expression. Again and again, they seem to balance in daring harmony. As if they are seeking refuge in a strange space that is also very familiar. Sometimes they remind us of a bygone age, of the years when the art of sculpture was defined by organic styling and formalised nature forms. The time of reconstruction, when a human figure in stone not only stood for a single person, but for mankind in general, human and universal and at the same time vulnerable and existential. But these sculptures have something timeless too, while the temporal nature is clearly recognisable in posture and expression. They are classically modern, but at the same time shuffle hesitantly into the present. It is the personal that is set in the monumental, the fleeting moment that seems to be petrified in a here and now, that bears the past in the memory.