Karola Pezarro

SOLO SHOWS
2012
Some where else – CBK Emmen – De Fabriek – Emmen – NL

2010
Karola Pezarro – Between Time – Museum Rijswijk – Rijswijk – NL

COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
2019
Duo exhibition with Martin Jarrie – Gallery Adorable – The Hague – NL

2018
Absence of Where you are – Duo exhibition with photographer Guus Rijven – Kadmium – Delft – NL

2016
True Nature – Exhibitions on authenticity, originality and truthfulness – Gallery Espace Enny – Laag Keppel -NL

2009
Inna architektura – A Galerii Kobro – Lodz  – Five artists from Germany and Poland – PL

VIDEOS
2021
Shinano Primitive Sense Art Festival 2021 – The fleeting moment of water – “ Liquid Thought”, video 2:14  – Japan

2017
Winter light – Light festival Schiedam  – Video « Carrousel » – Rotterdam – NL

2015
Winter light – Light festival Schiedam – Video sculpture « Visions » – Rotterdam – NL

OUTDOOR IN SITU INSTALLATIONS By Azunko (Karola Pezarro & Aris de Bakker)

2021
Art & Gavarres – “Reservoir” Girona – Spain
Lez’Arts en Adret – « En route » – Hautecour – FR
Twingi Landart – « Der Schupatron » – Binntal – Zwitserland.
Etangs d’Art – «  In transit » – Pays de Brocéliande (35) –  FR

2020
Le Parcours des Fées – « Taditatadi « –  Crévoux – FR

2019
Sentier des Arts – « Une vue de rêve » – on the border of the Gironde – Le Pôle-Nature – Vitrezay (17) – FR
Tankwa Artscape Residency – “Echo of the desert“- Tankwa desert – ZA
Vign’Art – « La Grande Dame » – Cuis (51) – FR

2018
Horizons-Art-Nature – « Take a moment » – Sancy, Massif du Sancy (54) – FR

2017
Art Trails in the Great Outdoors, The Mai Festival – « Intersection » – Gesves –  BE

2015
Des Artistes en Campagne – « Où se trouve le petit chaperon rouge? » – Savins (77) – FR

PRICES
2018
Take a moment – Honored as ‘Favorite of the public’ – ‘L’oeuvre coup de coeur du public’
Art-Nature en Sancy 2018 – Massif du Sancy (54) – FR

2015
Des Artistes en Campagne – « Où se trouve le petit chaperon rouge? » – Honored with the ‘Prix Land Art’ –  Savins (77) – FR

PUBLICATIONS
2018
Absence of where you are – Curator and text publication: Ingrid van Santen – Kadmium – Delft – NL

2013
Textilartist.org – I wrote an article on my artwork

2010
Between time – Karola Pezarro, part 26 in the Haags Palet serie – A richly illustrated monograph about artist Karola Pezarro with an introduction by Sandra Spijkerman –  ISBN 978-90-70003-27-2.

STATEMENT
My work is based on a strong sense of wonder about the fragility of life, about how the human mind works, how you remember, how your thoughts fan out. In my artworks I ask questions about what you carry with you visibly or invisibly. I examine these questions in embroidery drawings, I represent them in carriers with light-hearted luggage and in video sculptures.

In 2014, I founded together with Aris de Bakker the collective Akunzo. The body of work of Akunzo consists of ephemeral, site-specific projects. Each project has a strong commitment to the site and the environment as a whole. Projects are a reflection on a site or the history of a place, and often deal with concerns about the future of the planet. Akunzo works right on the site and often uses natural materials from the vicinity such as branches or earth. Sometimes unnatural elements related to the subject of the work are added. The combination of place and artwork is meaningful for Akunzo. They reinforce each other and together they form the project. That connection between site and what is made on the site, that’s what it’s all about. The observer experiences the project as a whole, possibly generating a new view, a new meaning or awareness.

ABOUT
As much as Karola Pezarro gives expression to personal experiences and impressions in her spatial compositions and structures, so she explores who she is, what she goes through and has gone through in her plaster figures wrapped in tissue.

One element that binds her work together is the rounded egg shape. It symbolises the caring shell embracing a vulnerability that is developing or has already reached maturity. At the same time, the ovals create an almost resistant shell around the tangle of memories, thoughts, dreams and associations that make the internal worlds so complex.

The same strata of meanings are also expressed in her figures. No matter how coarsely they rise from the earth, they always have something fragile about them. They emerge from the interplay of intuition and rationality. The shape that the figures take determines the choice of materials to be used, the thickness of the threads and the form that they present themselves. A bent figure whose head is connected to a trunk that rises from the earth and which is encased in a diaphanous cape, is stilled in the cycle from the start to the end of life, and everything in between. In another figure, the clasps that keep her bound recall that every individual, alone and frail in the universe, is inextricably bound with her own destiny and circumstances.

Actions during the process of creation are almost rituals that lead to a different figure each time. The freedom that Pezarro feels to work from her intuition guides her in directions where the shroud is always intended to protect that which her figures express while at the same time, hide.

Micha Ouwendijk