Germaine Kruip: A Possibility of an Abstraction: A Square Dance

The Stedelijk Museum and the Holland Festival proudly present the performance A Possibility of an Abstraction: A Square Dance by the Dutch artist Germaine Kruip. The work consists of an ongoing dance executed by dervishes, performed in the midst of a number of highlights of post-war abstract art from the collection of the Stedelijk.

Closely connected to the culture of Sufism, whirling dervishes perform a ritual, circular dance in order to try and reach a state of transcendence. The Dutch artist Germaine Kruip, who since 2011 has been creating installations and performances examining the various meanings attached to geometrical shapes, presents the performance with whirling dervishes, entitled A Possibility of An Abstraction: Square Dance. She has asked the dervishes to break through their circular dance patterns and introduce square patterns into their ritual, thereby shifting the dancer’s focus and alluding to the tradition of abstract geometrical art. The performance will be performed continually during opening hours, in the exhibition galleries of the Stedelijk.

More information about the artist

Germaine Kruip lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels. Since moving from theatre to the art world in the early 2000s, Kruip has been pursuing several lines of thought and work: her interest in ephemerality and where it condenses briefly into a physical or visual moment; in scenography of uncontrollable or ungraspable phenomena, such as the ever-changing daylight and the passage of time; in ritual and performance as abstracted moments of everyday life; in historical and art historical examples of attempts to reach abstraction by means of geometry – and finally in the desires, theories and ideologies that underlie these attempts.

The language of simple geometrical forms, such as circles or squares has deep roots in the histories of ideas, science, religion and art. Kruip employs these shapes in order to explore the relationship between art and ritual in repetitive gestures, which aim to subtly alter perception. By emphasising the gestural and physical origins of abstractions, she questions whether an absolute abstraction could ever be possible at all. Germaine Kruip received the Charlotte Köhler Prize in 2001 and the Prix de Rome (2nd prize) in the category theatre/autonomous art.

Recent Solo Exhibitions include; Geometric Exercises, Parra & Romero, Madrid, Spain (2013); A possibility of an abstraction, The Approach, London, UK (2013); Eye Trap/Metropole Orkest/IFFR, one-day performance 3rd February, Rotterdam (2012); A Room, 24 Hours II, Pilar Parra and Romero, Madrid, Spain and the Approach, London (2010); Only the title remains, Museum De Paviljoens, Almere, The Netherlands (2009-2010); Aesthetics as a way of survival, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (2009).

Also see: www.hollandfestival.nl

Dancers: Muaviye Kara, Huseyin Kara, among others.

Made possibly with support of the Mondriaan Fund.