Raquel van Haver, Jack Bell Gallery London, June 10 until July 3, 2015.
About:
RaQuel van Haver Lives and works in Amsterdam.
She was born in 1989 in Bogota, Colombia, but raised , lived and worked in the Netherlands, where she found here interest in art.
Her paintings and drawings you can define by big, raw, monumental and dark. They are representing a world where the need for identity is a big issue.
She fuses the tradition of painting with contemporary themes about the search for identity and issues of black , western, Caribbean and Latin American identity, religions, values and experience.
The works of RaQuel van Haver begins from observations that will be translated into a new form , Photos and sketches. From those photos and sketches she will make a new , non existing world or reality’ by using basic techniques such as collage, fragmentation to construct her paintings . The stories on the canvas are non existent but fragmented, and always seek out interpretation but still reflecting on the real world.
The viewer is confronted with figures and masks (mostly male) that are recognizable but hard to put a finger on by depicting the figures in unexpected ways. She rearranges reality and our perception by confront the viewer with their own identity ( the identity of the beholder) and the identity of the Other, the other person. Despite the fact that these figures are a little larger than in reality it’s above all the dominating characters of these figures, the tick layers of dark paint and the structure that makes you feel perhaps a little uncomfortable.
She is interested in the variety of people and culture and how response to the actual realities upon each other in public spaces. She also will work together with other artist and musicians, Hip-hop producers and poets to come to her subject of central interest. Her work infuses with the areas culturally specific hybrid of Latin American, African and European traditions.
