Bewitch | Nicole Havekost and Even Now | Keren Kroul

Events:

Artist Talk (4:30-5:30pm) & Opening Reception (5:30-7pm): Saturday, February 3  |  About: Nicole Havekost and Keren Kroul in dialogue together about the work in their exhibitions, moderated by Gallery Director Nicole Watson. Reception to immediately follow. For ASL interpretation and/or other accommodations, please contact nmwatson@stkate.edu by January 26.

In Bewitch, Nicole Havekost considers her changing body, motherhood and aging through large-scale, hand-stitched, felt, figurative sculptures. Her fascination with corporeality is evident in her forms, which hold simultaneous space for amazement, beauty and disgust. The artist explains: “[Bodies] are magical and glorious and gross and bewildering. I can actively influence the processes of my body but cannot control any of them fully. This body is mine but is also an organism with its own needs and demands that has no respect for my feelings and is not bothered by my shame. Coarse hair now grows in places that were once smooth. Lungs take in air, bones degrade. Once pregnant, the same body now hosts faltering hormones. Despite love, wounds ooze. I must accept it all as both revelation and horror. It is fundamental to being human. My work is the outlet for my compulsion to explore this exquisite, repulsive organism that exists beyond my desires and authority.”

Themes of memory, loss, grief and hope come together in Keren Kroul’s exhibition, Even Now. The show features a monumental watercolor composition and video installation framed by Paul Celan’s poem, “In the Daytime.” Kroul paints intuitively, allowing her lines, forms and colors to surface as she considers the way memories shape identity through time and place. Kroul writes, "the watercolor is inspired by memories of memories: my recollections of my grandmother’s stories, her experiences during the Holocaust […] While some images are opaque, reflecting their solid presence in the mind, others are a watery wash, the dissolving of concrete places, lives, and eventually, memories. Towering over the viewer, monumental in size while fragile in materiality, this work is a physical representation of the overwhelming helplessness I feel when confronted by the horror of this personal and historical legacy.”

Images attached:

Niki Havekost

Sustain, 2023

wool felt, cotton thread, paper, fiberfill, galvanized steel pipe, wood, sewing hardware

72” x 36” x 25”

Keren Kroul

The Shape of Memory (Detail), 2023

watercolor

30” x 46”

Nicole Havekost and Keren Kroul are fiscal year 2023 recipients of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. These activities are made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.