Flatland Gallery Amsterdam will open on Saturday, September 8th, 2012 with the inaugural solo exhibition of Carolein Smit.
In the midst of the art gallery district of Amsterdam, a mere stone’s throw from the Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, Foam and other art institutions, Flatland is proud to show the new ceramic sculptures from Carolein Smit.
Her work is known for its extremely evocative postures, imbued with certain vulnerability. Carolein is a master in creating a dual emotional charge; she satirically plays with that unknown turning point when beauty turns over in exuberance, hate in love, alienation in elucidation, and unresolved emotions in over-active sentiment. Much of her attention goes to the skin of her statues: it could be covered with thorns, holes, hairs, water drops, or a pattern of veins.
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, such as skulls, skeletons, small bones of animals; all these elements symbolize our temporary presence, but, as always with Smit, she shows them with a touch of irony.