Klara Kristalova

In Paris, Galerie Perrotin presents Wild Thought, a solo show by Swedish artist Klara Kristalova. The exhibition will present new ceramic works in small and medium formats, alongside Deer (2012) and Lost (2011), two sculptures in bronze patina.

After studying painting at the Royal Institute of Art in Sweden, Klara Kristalova dedicated herself to ceramics, where her use of astonishing colours and three-dimensional shapes allows her to create a fantastic and sometimes disturbing universe. "I needed to find my own language to share with others," says Kristalova. "An obvious and simple language that in some way could be universal."

Kristalova's universe, inspired by the popular imagination of Northern Europe, the tradition of fairy tales and the observation and direct contact with nature, is populated with solitary figures, often young girls and animals (hares, donkeys, birds, peppered moths) and chimera that are half way between animal and plant. Rather than featuring myths or relying on an immediate symbolism, the artist plays upon the ambiguity and ambivalence of her figures, suspended between innocence and danger, beauty and repulsion, attraction and fear.

The gracious and striking aspect of her varnish coated sculptures recall the world of childhood, haloed with an aura of mystery and strangeness. Kristalova's icons (a man with a donkey's head, tree-women, young girls with faces covered with butterflies and birds or drowning in black puddles) emerge from her unconscious, translate her emotions and thus possess a fascinating and impenetrable power.

Through 28 October 2012
Klara Kristalova: Wild Thought
Galerie Perrotin
Rue de Turenne 76, Paris