PEGGY KUIPER
b. 1986Peggy Kuiper (1986) born in The Netherlands and lives in Amsterdam. Kuiper paints portraits of memories. The brushstrokes recall sensations, wrapping and storing each remembrance in a thick layer of paint on her signature portraits. The figures embody feelings and echoes of the past, and function as the logic of memory itself, it is immersive and experienced as unique, yet common and uniting for all of us. Memory and emotive experience demand vulnerability In Kuiper’s portraits, she refuses any implication of fragility she insists on the fierce power that this holds. Ultimately, her portraits are studies of endurance.
While the palette borrows from the natural world, the figures are abstract, leaning into an imaginary world. Built from several layers of paint, in distinctly separated fields of color, they are rendered nude in soft, earthy tones. Often wearing masks, they proffer themselves to the spectator while simultaneously remaining hidden. They are the result of a laborious process of erasure and addition, and other paintings might hide underneath the final motif. As such, Kuiper’s works are vessels of mystery, memory, and muses.
Text courtesy Reflex Amsterdam.
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