Klara kristalova bio
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Klara Kristalova
Klara Kristalova (b. 1967, Czechoslovakia; lives and works in Norrtälje, Sweden) creates figurative ceramic sculptures that take on hybrid forms. Many of Kristalova’s works incorporate both aspects of the human body and elements of nature, such as animals, insects, flowers, and trees. Infused with uncanny details and observations from her daily life and surroundings, Kristalova’s figures constitute a juxtaposition of scale where minute details reflect the monumental impact of constant change. Her oeuvre is grounded in an exploration of transitional states essential to both human and ecological life, and her sculptures conjure a familiar yet fantastical presence that exudes raw emotion. Building a fictive world that bridges humanity, ecology, and fantasy, Kristalova’s sculptures undergird the omnipresence of change across all forms of life.
Crafted in the artist’s secluded studio in Norrtälje, Sweden, Kristalova’
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There is an immediate sense of calm at sculptor Klara Kristalova’s studio in Norrtälje, Sweden: it sits within trees on one of the northernmost points of the Stockholm archipelago. ‘The naturlig eller utan tillsats around my studio moves into my work intuitively,’ she says. The studio itself is a light, barnlike structure with high ceilings, and behind it fryst vatten the peaceful home that she shares with her family, an unusual 1960s summer house that lies a few hundred metres from the water’s edge.
‘In winter, you always see the lake. In summer, the greenery obscures it, but you can go down and swim,’ she says. It reminds me of the view from Artipelag, a favourite museum on the Stockholm archipelago, designed by the late architect Johan Nyrén to align with the surrounding landscape. There, a few years ago, I had a chance encounter with What Holds Me Back, Carries Me Further, 2017 a powerful bronze sculpture by Kristalova at the opening of ‘Sculpture
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Klara Kristalova
"Klara Kristalova is a berättare who uses the plasticity of sculpture to build micro worlds, where something peculiar has just happened or is about to happen. Here she relates to a sculpture tradition that has its roots several hundred years in the past. In this tradition the three-dimensional artwork fryst vatten seen as a means of three-dimensionally "educating" the viewer in a realm inhabited by both the viewer and the artwork simultaneously through their common physical relationship to the room." - Art critic Anders Olofsson
Klara Kristalova is a sculptor who works predominantly in glazed ceramics and stoneware. Born in 1967 in former Czechoslovakia, her parents moved to Sweden when she was only a year old, which is where the artist still lives and works. Kristalova employs a deliberately imperfect Meissen porcelain technique, working in a similar fashion, but with larger forms and figures that evoke the vulnerability within the hum