An exhibition featuring sculptures and drawings by Maaike Kramer and drypoint etchings with color from Salvador Dalí's 'Much ado about Shakespeare II' series, 1971, edition 98/250.
Art Gallery O-68 is taking a summer break, but there's still plenty to see, both in the gallery and at our Depot-o68. All by appointment.
Painterly Sculptures and Surrealist Shakespeare Etchings at Art Gallery O-68
A striking dialogue between old and new is now on display in Velp. Art Gallery O-68 presents the exhibition "Once Again, Kramer and Dalí," which combines Maaike Kramer's organic sculptures with colourful drypoint etchings from Salvador Dalí's "Much Ado About Shakespeare II" series. Kramer's work is on display alongside eight of the fifteen etchings Dalí created in 1971 based on plays by Shakespeare. The exhibition creates a mysterious atmosphere in which monumental, earthy forms of contemporary (wall)sculpture merge with romantic, dreamlike prints from the Surrealist tradition. The gallery is open by appointment only for this summer exhibition. WELCOME!
Maaike Kramer primarily uses raw materials like concrete, clay, and metal in her sculptures. Her oeuvre combines robust architectural elements with fragile, organic layers, such as curved ceramic slabs with softer glazes. This makes her works simultaneously "heavy, solid, and monumental" and "light, fragile, and unstable." In the drawings on display and sculptures, she reveals the precariously constructed structures behind our reality, where construction and collapse go hand in hand. Kramer's concrete, stone, and ceramic works thus mirror our precarious society. Her works seem like remnants of vanished structures, or foundations for something yet to come into being. In Kramer's recent work, for example, one sees "Sleutelwerk 2" here. The recent 'Sleutelwerken' question access, but what if the locks are anchored in concrete? This idea of temporary, playful structures is characteristic of her work: nothing is finished; everything remains a cautious balance between form and collapse, between admitting and excluding, standing upright and falling over.
In stark contrast to Kramer's robust works are the prints of Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), the master of Surrealism. Between 1968 and 1971, Dalí repeatedly returned to Shakespeare as a source of inspiration. His series "Much Ado About Shakespeare II" (1971) comprises sixteen color drypoint etchings. Dalí employed the drypoint technique: he scratched the composition into a metal plate with steel needles, creating a fine "burr" that, when printed, produces a velvety line. The prints were printed on Japon paper in an edition of 250. We have number 98.
Dalí translated the heroes of Shakespeare's plays into psychedelic images brimming with symbolism. Each etching is a kind of visual summary of a piece—from 'The merry wives of Windsor' to 'Troilus and Cressida'—with Dalí using iconographic details to capture the essence of the story. He brought the characters and their emotions to life, entirely in his signature style of hyperrealistic fantasy images, dreams, psychoanalytic motifs, and grotesque landscapes.
The combination of Kramer's sculptures and Dalí's graphic work creates an art-historical dialogue between two extremes. Dalí transforms originally realistic, medieval plays with a modern, surreal eye into ethereal images of color and suggestion. Kramer approaches the concept of "construction" as something fragile: her (wall) sculptures evoke a sense of collapsing utopias. Both artists thus question the boundaries between reality and illusion. Just as Kramer's pieces are a "monument to a constructed truth," Dalí uses Shakespearean figures like puppeteers in a universe he controls. The surprising interplay of stone/clay/porcelain works and lighthearted printed images makes the exhibition a captivating experience with both visual and intellectual depth.