“Juxtapose”
Paintings
Ahni Kruger
Exhibit: February 6 – March 6, 2009
Opening Reception: February 6, 2009, 5:30-8:00 PM
For more information please contact:
(973) 408 – 3758 or e-mail: ghiltlco@drew.edu
The Korn Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of new paintings by New Jersey artist Ahni Kruger which will be on view from February 6 through March 6, 2009. The work is located in the Korn Gallery in the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts at Drew University. The Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 12:30-4:00 PM, selected weekends and by appointment.
Ahni Kruger is a painter and printmaker who lives and works in New Jersey. Her paintings are captivating compositions created with vibrant colors and intricate patterns that will draw the viewer immediately into a magical world. The paintings express meditations on the vulnerability of devices we create as shields against threats, real and imagined. Her intent is to capture the flash of undeniable, unavoidable change at the moment edges of experience break through our constructed systems of defense.
Ahni Kruger holds a BFA from Cornell University and a MFA from Montclair University. She is the recipient of a NJSCA fellowship and grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches at Drew University and Montclair University.
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These paintings are meditations on the vulnerability of devices we create as shields against threats, real and imagined. My intent is to capture the flash of undeniable, unavoidable change at the moment edges of experience break through our constructed systems of defense.
To explore these ideas with paint, conceptual patterns jostle with realistic forms; loose brushstrokes collide with precisely focused intervals of structured color and accentuate the point of contact between distinctly different approaches to the medium. Space shifts precipitously as well. I engage many levels of allegory, juxtaposing seemingly incongruous elements. I often use armor as a visual metaphor, elaborately created by both man and nature. Tapestries—aesthetic cultural artifacts from once dominant civilizations—also play a part in these compositions.
A recent trip to South America was the source for Knights of the Pantanal, in which two Brazilian caimans rise up from a 15th C. Portuguese tapestry. A raging pink color field bears down on the battling forms, locking the beasts in battle. The back of the attacker confronts us in full color while its victim recedes into grey tones. Patterns on the thick, protective skin of the reptiles echo the repeated designs of the woven material, linking disparate elements with a common language, while the spatial compatibility between them is denied.
Ahni Kruger
January 2009