Return on Invest: Lilian Kreutzberger

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The work of Lilian Kreutzberger (1984) possesses an uncanny appearance due to the desolate spaces that play a leading role in her atmospheric paintings. 'My major interest continues to be man and his environment', she states. Every human being strives for happiness and perfection and hopes to achieve this. But at the same time we know it is impossible to actually reach this utopia. The awareness hereof is a painful part of our human condition. This is what Kreutzberger researches through (decayed) utopias and the ruins of hope, in exchange with the human being in these self-built environments.

Her paintings and drawings show this profound interest in the human condition in everyday urban life. Where one spectator probably only sees an abandoned and uncanny building, another will see, through the endless layers of grey paint, hope.

For Return on Invest Kreutzberger also displays, next to drawings and painting, recent work she made during her stay at the Parsons New School in New York: an installation of painted-over flowers. It is a spatially reconstructed version of the painting Vase with flowers from 1670 by Jan Davidsz de Heem. The thick layer of paint on the flowers was necessary to protect them against dying instantly during the application of the aggressive layer of lacquer. Against better judgement, Kreutzberger tries to control that which is perishable.

www.liliankreutzberger.nl

Lilian Kreutzberger, Untitled, 2012
photo: © Rob Kollaard, courtesy Stroom Den Haag

Invite (design Thonik, Amsterdam)