Abe Kuipers - in pastel

6 oktober 2007 - 23 maart 2008

In the Print Room of the Groninger Museum was an ample selection from the series of drawings in pastel the Groninger artist Abe Kuipers (1918) made in the latter half of the 1980s.
The pastels are populated by motifs and symbols which also often feature in his paintings, associative marks in many cases rendered at close quarters to one another.
In Kuipers’ work the lemniscate, symbolising the equilibrium between the spiritual and the material, also refers to dynamics on infinite repeat. Motifs such as the candle and the tilting abyss allude to finiteness, menace and downfall. Other recurrent motifs, such as characters, are less easily interpreted and seem to endeavour to further stress the estranged nature of the images.
The series of pastels can be understood as an emotional play on definitions, through which the artist unveils inner conflict at an even deeper level, between the rational will to apprehend and discernment of the impossibility of being able to do so, and, in consequence, between dismay and resignation, discomfort and solace.

The exhibition came about in collaboration with the Centrum Beeldende Kunst and Stichting Beeldlijn, which has made a film about the artist.