Hans van Meeuwen

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Project Room:20 Drawings

May 15 - July 3, 2006

Cristinerose Gallery is pleased to announce the opening if 20 Drawings, a new series of drawings by Dutch sculptor Hans van Meeuwen.

This fun yet ironic body of work examines the ambiguity and the multi-dimensionality of a child’s existence from the perceptual world of adults. Oversized eyes, flooding houses, and morphing abstract shapes create a magical world with a touch of irony. At first, the images evoke thoughts of a playful, childish world. However, using surprising details such as overflowing water, a crowd of television monitors and overgrown tree roots, feelings of alienation and fear pervade the drawings.

In the ambivalence of the expression of each drawing, the fragile experience the child has of reality contains somewhat the fascination with what is frightful. Hans van Meeuwen borrows images from the mundane world of media landscape - televisions, skyscrapers, and billboards - displacing them into the imaginable world of dreams.

These images are drawn from the child’s perspective where everything seems so sinister and large. They develop a spell, an almost mystical, magical state between reality and fiction. Through the depiction of objects, animals, and abstract forms, the artist leads us to the world of memories and dreams.

Van Meeuwen was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, lived for 15 years in Cologne, Germany and recently moved to New York. He has shown extensively both in galleries and museums throughout Germany and the Netherlands.