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DePreee Gallery Exhibition Features
"Contemporary Artists and the Dutch Tradition"

Posted February 13, 2003

HOLLAND -- An exhibition featuring work by four contemporary artists who are engaging with the Dutch tradition will open in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center at Hope College on Monday, Feb. 17, and continue through Friday, March 14.

The public is invited. Admission is free.

The exhibition, "Going Dutch: Contemporary Artists and the Dutch Tradition," features works by Charles Krafft, Aristarchus Kuntjara, Valentin Popov and Deborah Zlotsky. Each uses references to, or quotations from, Dutch art.

"For many, the Dutch masters represent one of the most important artistic traditions of the western world," said the show's curator, Dr. John Hanson, who is an assistant professor of art history and director of the gallery at Hope. "In the mid-20th century, artists tried to struggle free from traditions. Now, in the 21st century, artists are exploring new ways of reconciling themselves with their forebears."

There will be a reception in the De Pree gallery with an artist's lecture by Popov on Friday, Feb. 28, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. There will also be a lecture by Zlotsky on Thursday, March 6, at 4:30 p.m. in Cook Auditorium in the De Pree Art Center. The public is invited to both events, and admission is free.

Krafft began his career as a self-taught artist. He spent many years working in La Conner, Wash., before moving to Seattle in 1980. Disasterware , the project that has brought him international recognition, is a line of fine blue on white Delftware porcelain, in the shape of weapons, skateboards, and tiles commemorating criminals.

Kuntjara studied at the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, before moving to the United States in 1993 to study fine arts at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The work in the exhibition results from his fascination with European master artists of the Renaissance, primarily the Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch.

Popov was born in Kiev in the Ukraine in 1956. He studied art in Kiev and Moscow before moving to California under the auspices of a Djerassi Foundation Residency in 1990. "Rembrandt/NOT Rembrandt" is a series of collages and monotypes that mix fragments of Rembrandt's paintings with a variety of later printed images and mixed media.

Zlotsky has degrees in fine arts from Yale University and the University of Connecticut, and is currently professor of painting at the College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y. Her paintings resemble dark, foreboding dreamscapes populated by objects copied out of Dutch still lifes.

The De Pree Art Center is located on Columbia Avenue at 12th Street. The regular gallery hours are Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The gallery is handicapped accessible.

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