Gabrielle Kruger
Decorative painter
Cape Town, South Africa
Paint that peels, weaves and grows
- Gabrielle works with a custom-formulated acrylic paint which she sculpts into form
- Her practice spans installation, wearable sculpture and performance painting
- Nothing in her studio is discarded, dried paint becomes raw material for new work
Gabrielle Kruger's unique practice transforms paint into sculptural forms using her own formula of elastic paint. Woven into hanging installations and built into freestanding or wearable sculptures, the paint sheets are designed to be entered and moved through, with each vantage point producing a different composition. Gabrielle works with plant matter, alien grasses and embroidery elements alongside the paint, to connect her work to botany, ecology and the natural landscape. Operating in a circular process, she peels off paint dried on palettes and buckets and gathers it into 'paintiglomerates', borrowing from the oceanic phenomenon of plastiglomerates. These fragments become sculptural building blocks in which older pieces remain in active conversation with current works.
INTERVIEW
I have a recurring interest in constructing a new mythology for the present moment, one in which human, animal and plant life are understood as fundamentally interconnected.
I hope my work invites a loosening of fixed categories. By using materials that resist easy classification, I want to encourage people to perceive their own environments and lives through a different lens.
Through my current work, I transform paint and alien grass into woven, nest-like structures. Referencing the myth of Atlas, these forms explore the body and the environment as concepts of home.
My family of makers has shaped my practice directly. My mother, a textile designer, and my father, an architect and urban designer, have always encouraged creative thinking and an ethic of resourcefulness that remain part of my studio’s DNA.
Gabrielle Kruger
Decorative painter
Cape Town, South Africa
ADDRESS
Address upon request, Cape Town, South Africa
AVAILABILITY
By appointment only
LANGUAGES
English
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