Paul Kaptein & Eric van Straaten “Future Perfect”
Krause Gallery
This event has ended.
Krause Gallery presents “Future Perfect” Paul Kaptein coming from half way across the world in AU prepares for
the show using the traditional methods of hand wood carving while Eric van Straaten out of Holland creates his work using
recent technology and 3-D prints all his sculptures. Although they come from two sides of the sculpture world there is no
doubt they are two of the best in their field. Both create sculptures unlike anyone in the art world with precision and craft
second to none.
Paul Kaptein has decided to use laminated wood to enhances the feeling of hand carved. As Paul puts it – the laminated
wood starts the enactment of key principles: expansion and contraction, interconnection and incompleteness. Once again the
material processes of Paul’s push toward immaterialism - finding life through the dissection of (material) language. In this
sense Paul is asking language, the description of materialism as process in this case, to become the energetic impact of the
work, the spark that ignites the fusion that creates transformation (which in itself is form). His figures are alive only under this
weight of knowing: of knowing that their hold on temporality is misconstrued as some sort of knowing. Their seeming
emergence from the history of art, sub-cultures and sport – of referencing artists, icons and mythologies – of anticipated
potential futures – is the counterpoint to their being vehicles toward discussing emptiness, broken data streams, hand
skilling, interruptions of information networks… and time/always time.
Paul’s work remixes the immaterial into the material, language into disassociation, the artists into the VJ – creation only
happens when the natural flow is interrupted – when light is pulled in, when matter is enfolded, when stars die and babies
cry. The spaces allow us time to catch breath. Paul’s work, though remixing the present, gives us (at least) two turns to
capture the moment.
Eric van Straaten:
“According to trendwatchers, 3D-printing is the next big thing: in the near future, every household will own a printer that is
capable of printing digital three-dimensional objects into a physical object. In the process that is best known under the name
‘Additive Manufacturing’, a 3D-printer builds up a model layer by layer by selectively hardening liquid or powder.
If this powder is a plaster-like material, a model can be directly printed in full color. The 3D-printing of delicate and colored
models is far from being just pushing a button, but requires great technical skills. Therefore only a few specialize in this
technique and there is no artist who pushes the boundaries colorized 3D-prints as far as Eric van Straaten.
There is no technique that is capable of achieving such a great degree of hyper(sur)realism as 3D-modeling. At the same
time, 3D printing is the only technique with which virtual models can be made actually physically touchable. Physical
expressiveness in form and content is the biggest strength of the work of Eric van Straaten: while the sculptures remain to
have a certain digital feel to them, the pieces contain a weirdly eroticized corporeality. Balancing on the edge of kitsch, the
marzipan-like quality of the material resonates beautifully with the apparent innocence of the scenery.
Eric van Straaten about his work: “I believe that the most beautiful female faces lie somewhere in between that of a juvenile
and a full grown woman, whereby the lines in the face follow largely the socalled ‘golden ratio’, but at the same time is not
symmetrical. Recently I found out (by measuring the faces I already made) that for me, the ‘perfect’ female face follows the
rules of the golden ratio, but then decreased in height with a factor of 88%. In this way the golden ratio comes more in the
visinaty of that of a young(er) girl, which a predominate in my work.
For me, the focus on girls on the threshold of adulthood reflect both my own obsession and that of contemporary western
civilization with (frozen) youth. By using different accessories, companions and scenery, I try to transform these figures into
Nemeses (not in the sense of archenemies but in the sense of the Greek goddess Nemesis, the spirit of divine retribution
against those who succumb to hubris: arrogance before the gods).
I am also obsessed by a wide array of ideas that I attach to the (preferrably beautiful) female form. For me beautiful girls
generate all kinds of emotions, memories, longings, struggle with things like sexuality and getting older, love and loneliness,
being childish and living like an adult et cetera.”
Media
Schedule
from December 05, 2015 to January 28, 2016
Opening Reception on 2015-12-05 from 14:00 to 18:00