Jasper Krabbe
painting
2RC Rome - 2002
Curated by Jonathan Turner
The main theme in the young Dutch artist Jasper Krabbé's new work is clearly recognizable - portraits, interior scenes and fragmented landscapes. His style and his technical competence are full of poetry and emotion. Krabbé's work is full of contradictions, ambiguous and yet patently personal. Sometimes he fuses collage with painting, incorporating torn cartons, postal elements, pages from his diaries and sketchbooks as an integral part of the final composition.
In his later works, Krabbé paints with a thick impasto using dull colors such as pastel colors, baby blue, pale spearmint and pale pink. These are the colors of a nursery, associated with theatrical forms and gestures of a calmed expressionism. In a series of small faded paintings he paints stairways, panoramic views and courtyards, reduced to miniature scale. The influence of the North African decorations is evident. These precious works contrast the large-format paintings, in which the heads and busts of an archaic man are exalted like a hibernating monument; central figures represented in glacial colors, ivory and pinstripe yellow.
“These works were inspired by faded memories of my travels, along with a heady sense of nature. Somehow, they mirror a state of enlightenment, in images that are pure, that come from my subconscious. They are veiled, born from white, with only a hint of color ".
After the success of his first solo show in Italy at 2RC, in 2000, and the presentation of his work at Miart, this new exhibition of his recent works consists of three large canvases and a series of about 30 small oils. As always, Krabbé's work has evolved from his quest for the representation of the universal portrait, it is the artist's idea as a primitive figure in a vast landscape. The idea of a paradise is never too far away.