Yesterday, I attended the opening of Elizabeth Kleinveld's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, a Dutch-American fine arts photographer from Amsterdam who was originally born in New Orleans, USA.
Right away, I was struck by the burst of colour in her photography. I love flowers, but I have never quite seen flowers portrayed like this. When asked how she decided to create this series of flowers, she told me it all started when Hurricane Katrina devastated her hometown in 2005. Compelled to capture the storm’s aftermath, she decided to use photography in the hopes of rebuilding her childhood city.
Elizabeth then became interested in capturing macro shots of the destruction which she found to be a metaphor of the catastrophic damage that Hurricane Katrina wreaked on New Orleans. She decided to shoot the debris against contrasting blue skies which gave the images a haunting but beautiful quality.
'Mardi Gras' by Elizabeth Kleinveld
Kleinveld's interest in close-up photography continued, but in 2007 she shifted her focus to flowers, finding inspiration in the vibrant colours of exotic flowers and their reflections in water, which gives them a painted and abstract quality. To Kleinveld, the flowers symbolized the beauty of life on the one hand and fragility of it on the other. The small things in life can be destroyed in an instant because at the end of the day the elements of nature cannot always be controlled by man.
During the making of the flower reflections series, a disaster of a different kind occurred—the financial crisis of 2008. This crisis exposed the ugly side of human nature, where greed can propel us to believe almost anything and make us lose perspective on the real value of life as we try to achieve fulfillment through inflated status symbols.
Out of that came the Tulip Mania series, based on an era when tulip spout vases represented the abundance of wealth during the height of the Dutch Golden age in the 17th century in The Netherlands. Back then, the Dutch displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. Around 1624, the prices for tulips reached exorbitant heights, and one tulip bulb was as expensive as a canal house (±8M HKD) in Amsterdam.
Since the Dutch also had a lively trade route with the East, a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They imported, among other things, spices in bulk and millions of pieces of Chinese porcelain. The Chinese workmanship and attention to detail impressed many, and only the richest could afford the early imports until Emperor Wanli died and the supply to Europe was interrupted. This is when the Dutch potters started to imitate the traditional blue and white Chinese porcelain (called delftware).
Through her photography, Kleinveld grapples with her feelings of helplessness to these two different disasters, trying to transform her energy into something positive. Her exhibition “For the Love of Flowers” is a compilation of collections that reflects her passion for flowers and the transformation of devastation into beauty and hope.
This is Kleinveld's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, which has been realised in cooperation with the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Hong Kong and Macau. Her work has been shown in the US Senate, the Louisiana State Museum, Colorado Fine Arts Center, DiverseWorks in Houston, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Dutch Embassy in Washington D.C. and a number of locations in the Netherlands, where she now lives and works.
The exhibition runs from 19 May – 17 June 2011.
a gallery
2-4 Mee Lun Street
Central, Hong Kong
+852 2868 0776
www.a-gallery.com.hk
Opening Hours: 1pm -6pm (Monday-Saturday)
