SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Casemore Kirkeby is presenting Becoming Blue, a unique installation of performance-based portrait photography from Anouk Kruithof, a project spanning 2006-2009. Kruithof’s series Becoming Blue comprises 21 portraits and three spatial stills. They are presented in different formats and reveal Kruithof’s highly exceptional approach to the topic of portrait photography.
During extended sessions, which Anouk Kruithof called one-to-one performances, she did not usually work behind the camera but in the rest of the room, frequently pressing the trigger by remote control. At the same time, she made constant but minor physical interventions to influence the person being portrayed, so that her photos capture the subjects gestures and facial expressions interaction to the unknown, irritation or stress. Reactions out of the blue. Blue is a colour we associate with infinity and meditative calm both in art historical as as in psychological meaning.
The poses and gestures of the persons portrayed obviously contradict such associations – a stylistic means that Kruithof deliberately chooses in order to visualise different emotional and psychological states during a process of surprise or even confrontation. Kruithof’s thinking in color and in the characteristics of pictures is the clearest evidence that, for Anouk Kruithof, the process of elaborating the photos is not coincidental or done for its own sake, not an experiment or test run, but a procedure carried out in accordance with the rules of beauty, in the knowledge of the characteristics of aesthetic perception – and thus artistically necessary.
Anouk Kruithof (b. 1981 in Dordrecht, the Netherlands), has exhibited internationally at institutions such as: Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; FOAM, Amsterdam, La Boverie, Liege, MBAL Switzerland; The Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen China; Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg; Culture and Arts Center, Daegu Korea; Capitain-Petzel Gallery, Berlin: KIT (Kunst Im Tunnel) Düsseldorf; Temporare Kunsthalle, Berlin, Autocenter Berlin; Fotoforum, Bolzano, Knochkdown Art Center, New York, bitforms gallery, New York, ICP, New York; Capricious Gallery, New York, Higher Pictures Gallery, New York, Museum het Domein Sittard, the Netherlands; Escougnou Cetraro gallery, Paris,; The Netherlands Photo Museum (NFM), Rotterdam; MARCA Museum Catanzaro, Italy; MAMAC (Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art) Liege, Belgium, among others. Kruithof is included in public collections such as; Het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur Switzerland, Aperture Foundation New York, Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA), Museum het Domein Sittard, FOAM Amsterdam, MBAL Le Locle Switzerland, Pier 24 library San Francisco, Ioannis Christoforakos Collection (ICC) Athens/Munchen, MOMA library New York, ICP library New York, New York Public Library, Grimmuseum Berlin, Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken NL, VU Amsterdam, Menzis, KRC, AMC, ART 21, DOK, NFGV, Meijburg, Robeko + several private collections.
