The RHA Gallery presents the first major survey of work by the multi-disciplinary artist Vera Klute, titled Plunge. The exhibition gives an overview of the artists diverse practice spanning from 2011 to present, displaying video, painting, sculpture and drawing. While portraiture plays a large part in Klute’s work in the various loaned paintings and sculpture, the artist is not limited to traditional oil painting, but applies media such as animation and ceramics to her genre. The exhibition title is taken from one of the new works in the exhibition, suspended conjoined limbs take a dynamic dive from the ceiling covered in milky, wet silicone, Plunge (2017). This work is showcased alongside other new works, the ephemeral rotating cloud cogs, Black Cloud(2017) and White Cloud (2017).
On entering the exhibition, we encounter the large video projection The Grand Scheme (2013), a slow meditation on our place in this world, based on Renaissance ideas of heaven, earth and the underworld. Mirroring this in the next space is an elaborate sculpture Stampede (2015) made entirely from paper depicting a number of legs tumbling over each other. Klute’s practice also encompasses home-made mechanics; as exemplified in Move Along (2014) a wall full of synced waving paper arms and the revolving clouds on acrylic discs.
The works are playful, yet exemplify Klute’s self-taught nature, constantly developing and perfecting form and technique. Whether it is realistic painting or geometric paper sculpture, each piece showcases the artist’s great attention to detail and inventiveness with materials and technology.
While the work is formally and technically very different, there are underlying ideas throughout the exhibition. Inspired by the everyday Klute utilizes familiar objects and imagery. The artist looks at how we perceive the outside world and our place in it, and sees the individual as displaced in its own habitat. Like an outside observer, Klute, is attempting to make sense of, an often-absurd everyday life with its cycles, routines, habits, and family relationships looking at the human condition, to categorize and find the pattern within the chaos.
