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In de Rarekiek
14 September – 21 October 2012

Foam presents Doina Kraal’s installation In de Rarekiek, in cooperation with the Soledad Senlle Art Foundation. Unique for Foam is that the work will be on view in Kraal’s project space, at the Voormalige Stadstimmertuin 4-6 in Amsterdam, where she has worked on the installation over the past year.

Doina Kraal creates installations on location, making use of video, photography and sculpture. In these installations Kraal creates her own personal world – recognisable elements are juxtaposed against an unfamiliar reality. Realistic and artificial, old and new, and present and past alternate throughout the work. The In de Rarekiek installation allows the visitor to step into another world, a world which surprises and amazes. Kraal has designed a life-size diorama, nine metres long, four metres wide and two and a half metres high. Peepholes line the front of the structure. This diorama is a reference to the so-called ‘Wunderkammer’ produced in Europe during the Renaissance. It was a room full of curiosities and forerunner of the museum as institution. This cabinet of curiosities was the domain of scientists and intellectuals, where objects and strange articles were collected and classified.

With In de Rarekiek Kraal examines science from a strong desire for imperfection. Her search for imperfection and asymmetry breaks through the classical ordering and categorising of objects. The objects she displays are for the most part indefinable and cannot immediately be traced back to something, whereby the meanings are muted – creating an imaginative and magical microcosm.

In de Rarekiek can be considered as a key work in Kraal’s oeuvre. Her studies over the past years of archives, stories and collections come together in this work. Fascinated by the present and the past, aspects in her work refer to her own memories and events, and she investigates her own worldview.

Doina Kraal (1980) graduated from the Fine Art and New Media department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 2002. She then earned a Master in Fine Art at the Central Saint Martins College of Art in London. Her work has been shown in the Point Blank Gallery, Johannesburg (2005), Times Square Gallery, New York (2008), Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010), Soledad Senlle Gallery, Amsterdam (2011) and other locations in the Netherlands.

In de Rarekiek by Doina Kraal can be seen from 14 September to 21 October 2012 at the Voormalige Stadstimmertuin 4 – 6 in Amsterdam. Open from Thursday- Sunday 12 am – 6 pm.

Note to editors: For information and visual material please contact the communications department, e-mail foam[at]foam.org or phone +31 (0)20 5516500.

In de Rarekiek is a collaboration between Foam and ‘Soledad Senlle Art Foundation’. This project is subsidized by het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsdeel Centrum.
www.soledad.nl

Foam is sponsored by the BankGiroLoterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Delta Lloyd and the VandenEnde Foundation.

Foam
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
phone: + 31 (0)20 5516500
www.foam.org