Klara Kristalova

Installation view: Klara Kristalova, Efter ett långvarigt snöfall, 1994, plaster, 45 x 51 x 6 cm. Photo: Tinni Ernsjöö Rappe.

Kristalova constructs an odd yet familiar world, inhabited by characters who are peculiar, alone, quiet, and perhaps lost—as if they have just escaped from a cruel tale and are waiting for a passerby to show them the way. Made from glazed ceramics, Kristalova’s figures evoke rawness, vulnerability, and humanity. Drawing from Nordic storytelling and traditional myths, the artist seeks to convey basic human emotions such as fear, love, sadness, and guilt, which emerge from her work like memories from our own childhoods. The landscape, though not directly represented, is an essential component of her mental and physical universe, inferred in fragments from the drawings, ceramics, and bronzes that populate the dark and mysterious exhibitions she has unveiled in recent years.

Klara Kristalova, b.1967 in Prague, lives and works outside of Norrtälje, Sweden. She studied at The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (1988–1993). Kristalova established herself with a number of exhibitions and public commissions in Sweden before her international recognition in the late 2000s. She has since then exhibited at galleries and museums around the world including solo exhibitions at Site Santa Fe, USA (2009), SFMoMA, San Francisco, USA (2011), Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2012), Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden (2013), Västerås Konstmuseum, Sweden (2013), Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, USA (2015) and Gl Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017). She is represented in public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France,  Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Broad Art Museum, Michigan, USA, FNAC, Paris, France, EMMA, Espoo, Finland, Norton Museum of Art, Florida, USA.

Sources:
Perrotin - Contemporary Art Gallery
Galleri Magnus Karlsson