Ouborgprijs 2011

André Kruysen

Presentation Ouborg Award
Saturday 26 November 2011, 4 pm by Marjolein de Jong (alderman for Cultural, City Center and International Affairs)
Location: Auditorium Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Stadhouderslaan 41, The Hague

The Ouborg Award 2011 has been presented to André Kruysen (1967). The award, named after the artist Pieter Ouborg (1893-1956) from The Hague, is a municipal prize for visual arts given every two years to an artist from The Hague, and consists of a sum of money (€ 10.000), an exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and a publication made by Stroom Den Haag.

The jury for the Ouborg Award was convinced of the merit of André Kruysen's work. Its jury report says that Kruysen is an impassioned artist producing a constant flow of high-quality work that constitutes a perpetual quest for deeper understanding. It also points out that Kruysen plays a significant role in the Hague art world and teaches sculpture at the city's Royal Academy of Art (KABK). His work features in various private and public collections in the Netherlands and elsewhere and can be seen in public spaces in a number of Dutch localities.

André Kruysen's sculpture encompasses many contradictions. The sacred effect of light stands in sharp contrast to the fast-moving image culture we inhabit and which is a ubiquitous presence in every area of our lives. Kruysen is inspired by the chaos that surrounds us, but seeks to distil a meditative experience from it. However, his work also betrays a degree of anarchy. His sculptures are reminiscent of haphazard heaps of kerbside waste and other informal structures. Or indeed of the stacked planes of Russian Constructivism, or the buildings of architects like Daniel Libeskind. At the same time, they are the result of a detailed investigation of the interactions between space, light and material, brought together to form huge floating architectural compositions.
www.andrekruysen.nl

The jury of the Ouborg Award 2011 consisted of:
Justin Bennett (artist, faculty member Institute for Sonology, The Hague), Roos van Put (editor-in-chief Kunstbeeld), Marie-José Sondeijker (director West), Benno Tempel (director Gemeentemuseum Den Haag), Arno van Roosmalen (chairman of the jury, director Stroom Den Haag).

Publication:
André Kruysen Ouborgprijs 2011
Texts: Mark Kremer, André Kruysen, Arno van Roosmalen, Huug Schipper, P. Struycken
Design: Huug Schipper / Studio Tint
Published by: Stroom Den Haag
More information and on line orders: click here.
(available from 26 November 2011)

Exhibition
André Kruysen 'Uprising as passage'
in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
27 November 2011 - 18 March 2012
For his exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Kruysen has decided to create a site-specific installation taking as its point of departure the middle one of the three windows in the museum's Projects Gallery. This will be the start of the interplay between natural light, materials and surrounding space that is so typical of Kruysen's work. The light slanting downward through the window will be caught in the sculpture and deflected upwards. Since Kruysen's works are often temporary in nature, the general public never has long to appreciate them. In the Gemeentemuseum, everyone will be able to come and experience his work properly, because a Kruysen sculpture is an ever-changing thing that cannot be taken in at a glance, any more than it can be controlled. It is, as it were, a ‘space in movement'.
More info: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

André Kruysen previously at Stroom Den Haag
Over Vedra, exhibition Toussaintkade (2003)
Sculpture gallery P. Struijcken (2005)
Workshop Thorbecke, presentation and proposal (2008)
nu monument: onderzoek monumenten in Den Haag (2008)