Carolein Smit at Flatland Gallery
On the 8th of September the incredible Dutch ceramic artist Carolein Smit will open her exhibition ‘Death and the Maiden’ at the newly opened Flatland Gallery in Amsterdam. The work of the Academy of fine arts, St. Joost graduate is known for its evocative postures which inhabit at the same time a certain vulnerability. Much of her attention in her statues goes to the skin: it could be covered with thorns, holes, hairs, water drops, or a pattern of veins. The aesthetic created by these choices has a strong connection to the magic-realistic tradition in the arts. Carolein borrows themes from classic mythology and biblical tales, such as greed, power and impotence, vanity, perishableness and death. Often her sculptures enclose elements like those we find in vanitas.
Carolein Smit was introduced with ceramics in 1996 at the European Ceramics Work Centre in Den Bosch and since that moment she’s been involved with contemporary ceramic sculptures. Her work is in collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany and the Fuled International Museum (FLICAM) Fuping, China. In 2011 her work was added to the Asante collection, Switzerland and the Thomas Olbricht collection, Germany.
The exhibition will run from the 8th to the 29th of September 2012.
For more information see here.