The Approach is pleased to present the third solo show in the gallery by Germaine Kruip.

A possibility of an abstraction reflects the first part of an ongoing project that Kruip embarked upon in 2011 as a further crystallization of several lines of thought and work that she has been pursuing for over a decade: her interest in ephemerality and where it condenses briefly into a physical or visual moment, before scattering again; in scenography of uncontrollable or ungraspable phenomena as ever-changing daylight and the passage of time; in ritual and performance as abstracted moments of everyday life; in historical and art historical examples of attempts to reach abstraction by means of geometry – and finally in the desires, theories and ideologies that underlie these attempts.

Since moving from theatre to the art world in the early 2000s, Kruip has continued to merge inside and outside, reality and its mirror image, thoughts and their visual manifestations. In analogy to her previous installations at the Approach, Kruip once again makes use of what is outside of the exhibition space: in the pub at the ground floor a white column made out of large geometrical marble beads will be installed from floor to ceiling, continuing upstairs in the gallery space. While visually joining pub and gallery, the column also emphasises the change in context when transitioning to and from each space.

In the gallery several instances of Kruip’s investigation in abstraction accompany the column: a metal mirror from Aranmula (India), famous for its secretive process of casting and polishing by hand to achieve a reflective surface that is as close to perfect as possible but never completely rid of distortion, has according to Kruip’s instructions been made in the shape of a square rather than the traditional circle; four identical mirrors spin around their axes, creating brief projected flashes of a geometrical pattern; and two seemingly symmetrical wooden ellipses, hewn from the same source, have been stained and sanded to emphasise the inherent dissimilarities of the pattern of their wood grain. On the last day of the show, the stripped down, bare movement of a Sufi dancer will bring these objects back to the movement that underlies them. The formal language of simple geometrical forms such as circles or squares has deep-seeded roots in the histories of ideas, of science, of religion and of art. Kruip employs these shapes in order to explore the relationship between art and ritual in repetitive gestures that aim to subtly alter perception. By emphasizing the gestural and physical origins of the abstractions, she questions whether an absolute abstraction could ever be possible at all.

- text by Annick Kleizen -