Klara Kristalova
Iaspis
1997
Klara Kristalova was born in former Czechoslovakia in 1967 and moved to Sweden with her parents when she was only a year old. She studied at the Royal University College of Fine Art, Stockholm. Klara constructs an odd yet familiar world, inhabited by characters who are peculiar, alone, quiet, and perhaps lost – as if they have just escaped from a cruel tale and are waiting for a passerby to show them the way. Made from glazed ceramics, Kristalova’s figures evoke rawness, vulnerability, and humanity. Drawing from Nordic storytelling and traditional myths, the artist seeks to convey basic human emotions such as fear, love, sadness, and guilt, which emerge from her work like memories from our own childhoods. The landscape, though not directly represented, is an essential component of her mental and physical universe, inferred in fragments from the drawings, ceramics, and bronzes.
Selected solo shows include: Soft Parade, Perrotin, Seoul, Korea (2021); Poem and Thought, Lidköpings Konsthall, Lidköping, Sweden (2020); Galerie Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2020); Klara Kristalova, GL STRAND, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017); Slottet, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2017); Turning into Stone, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, USA (2014).
Iaspis, Sweden
Iaspis is the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Program supporting international exchange for practitioners in the areas of visual art, design, craft and architecture. Iaspis' activities aim to enable professionals to develop artistically and improve their working conditions by establishing international contacts between practitioners and professionals such as curators and critics and others active in the field.
