Plasterheads 2021
For this exhibition, Kruse has developed a large-scale installation which will be displayed in the first room of the gallery. Displayed on a collapsible table, the installation is likened to a miniature world, where multiple gure-like maquettes are scattered across various miniature architectural elements. Rendered in different positions and poses, the maquettes resemble human figures caught in various acts: climbing in and out of the structure, looking up or down, in search for something. Yet, the figurines don’t interact with each other. Described as a metaphorical playground of the inner psyches, Lunapark (2021) attests to the artist’s interest in the deeper psychological states that motivate and shape the world that their human counterparts inhabit. For Kruse, each of the elements within the entire installation, including its materials, serve as a deeper metaphor that expresses the structure of the world that we inhabit. By choosing to use plaster and soapstone as primary materials to construct the maquettes, both of which are easily shaped, Kruse highlights the very malleability of human nature itself. Set against the infinite expanse of the table construction, these maquettes seemingly capture the endless permutations of behavior that result when they are connected by space and time.
Also on view is a second installation consisting of a group of four sculptures. Presented in the second room of the gallery, Will o’ the wisp (2021) evokes the imagery of a still landscape. In contrast to the thin, elongated forms found in Lunapark, these sculptures engender a feeling of solidity through their volume and weight. Created through the use of materials such as wood, marble, plaster, and soapstone, these sculptures poetically underscore a sense of settlement, steadiness, and fixity.
Accompanying these sculptures are a second freestanding sculpture The Directionalist (2021), and a hung wall sculpture Intermission (2021). These works expand on the formal and metaphorical binaries that can be found between the dynamics of the two antimonious installations —play/rest, chaos/order, and instability/balance. Building on her fascination with interior and exterior states of being, Kruse’s latest works trace a connection between the formal practice of sculpture, and the psychological conditions of continuous becoming.
