16 September - 22 October 2022 "Balance in Chaos" Trudy Kunkeler - Solo exhibition - Sculpture - Editorial Aminda Saludes, curator

View of some of the ceramic pieces exhibited

Pigments the colors of the earth: soft moss-colored greens and browns, ochres of rich sienna, in reds and yellow, and burnt terra-cotta’s - reminiscent of iron and oxides naturally found in clays - color the sculptures exhibited at the Taranmana gallery this September. 

Trudy Kunkeler (Dordreetch, 1944) works on the representation of nature, its constant transformation, caused by human being or geological activity: the collision of continents, clashes of earth, rockslides and timeless erosion.

Her inspiration comes from the surrounding nature; she specifically engages in the idea of landslides, as an important part of her work is about geographical activity - as the following titles indicate, that correspond to 3 different themes in her work: Fragmentation, Shifting matter or Change of elements.

This body of work consists of fourteen sculptures, six photographs of images of rocks and water, and a series of photocopies on the execution of the work that she combines with newspaper photos of places and landscapes that are still intact. The artist explains that her creative intention is reflected through these photos, copies and through the titles of the work. 

This exhibition deals with an ordered chaos, or chaotic order, that the artist observes in these processes of transformation, investigating on the evolution of earth, both on matter and humanity. Trudy Kunkeler represents and expresses through clay, the destruction and construction of nature; hers is a language of forms that she transforms into new landscapes of architectural ceramics. A very architectural sculpture that the artist leaves in its pure state, at times unfinished and - that due to its very angular geometric shapes with these almost primary touches, recalls the brutalist architectural movement of the 1950s.

In each new project the artist produces a sculpture preserving something of the previous shapes to include in the following series of work. Trudy disassembles her environment into elements which she builds up again into new architectural unities from the strata of memory. 

Every sculpture represents a small piece of nature. The artist molds and sculps the clay into shapes built up of flat tiles in a color palette close to the earth, in deep orange browns to brick reds, that she structures and positions in slanted and crisscrossed layers so as to recreate a geological feature; like a stratification of rocks - as if mountains pushed upwards by the shock of the continents - into slanted peaks with jagged edges and ridges, and textured with engravings of beautiful latticework. 

“The way she walks through the landscape is just the way she walks through her memory forming images which she transforms into architectural ceramics”. Elisabeth de Schipper, Excercises in crossing the border (2018). 

Trudy Kunkeler studied vocational training in ceramics and crafts in Rotterdam and at the Free Academy in The Hague, where she studied ceramics and glazes with Emmy van Deventer, among others.

Subsequently, she did a first year of training at Escola Massana in Barcelona with a scholarship from the Ary Scheffer Fund, followed by a second year at the invitation of Professor Maria Bofill.