Paintings

PAINTINGS, ATMOSPHERES AND ENVIRONMENTS

‘Drawing is not just a design tool for Kruger. He starts drawings all the time and sometimes his drawings give rise to paintings. His paintings in turn are evocations of the imagined cities that are the inspiration for his buildings Paint is unlike anything else. It has its own unique energy. While in process, the This applies to architecture as well. If I think about Uytenbogaardt and Kahn, they both spoke about the place knowing what it wants to become. It’s almost like a spirit waiting to take form.

Like his drawings, Kruger’s paintings are layered, occupying a mysterious space between abstraction and representation, depicting environments that hover between reality and fiction. ‘Building up the layers is a very meditative process’ he says. ’I am drawn to the idea of the palympsest - the idea of drawing over pre-existing texts, layering over paintings.

Modern and ancient, built and organic structures occupy the same indeterminate visual plane. Although urban in feel, his paintings have a natural, elemental quality about them. Their chalky, matte textures and parched luminous colours emulate the matte surfaces common in nature.

Trees and buildings coexist within the frame. Like the paintings of Paul Klee, these works evoke the structures and mystic geometries that underlie natural and built environments. ‘Like the earth itself, cities are in constant transformation. We modify and transform things. We use the earth to make architecture. Buildings take on the scale of mountains, while in nature we find sky scrapers made by termites. Architecture could, in Moneo’s words, be regarded as “another form of nature” – but, it could all be taken by nature, by a hurricane or a tsunami wave... To understand architecture's role in the city, it should be treated with re- spect and care for its history and context, in the manner of care applied to an archaeological site. You’ve got to be very careful about how you touch things; where you put things.’

Excerpt from article in Architecture SA by Alexandra Dodd