Karrine Pradier

Since my early works, I’ve been exploring the re-presentation of the figure, its perversion, focusing on the fragility of childhood and its various connotations.

Through embroidery (passe-temps, through the looking glass…) or distortion (cells) I’ve been altering the identity of children, exploding one kind of re-presentation and making another one emerge.

In Hide-away, a powerful graphite drawing, the little girl encapsulates the trepidation of childhood. Examination, a starker drawing in comparison displays the vulnerability of the child as the awkward little girl encounters us the voyeur and her examiner.
The work is about confronting the innocence of childhood with the cynicism of adulthood. In a later series of drawings, banal behaviors of little girls are subverted as the identity (the eyes) has been masked out with a mosaic tiling, reminding people magazines.

Karine Pradier
MA Fine Art, Printmaking, Camberwell College of Arts, London

Artist Statement:
Since my early works, I’ve been exploring the re-presentation of the figure, its perversion, focusing on the fragility of childhood and its various connotations. Through embroidery (passe-temps, through the looking glass…) or distortion (cells) I’ve been altering the identity of children, exploding one kind of re-presentation and making another one emerge. In Hide-away, a powerful graphite drawing, the little girl encapsulates the trepidation of childhood. Examination, a starker drawing in comparison displays the vulnerability of the child as the awkward little girl encounters us the voyeur and her examiner. The work is about confronting the innocence of childhood with the cynicism of adulthood. In a later series of drawings, banal behaviors of little girls are subverted as the identity (the eyes) has been masked out with a mosaic tiling, reminding people magazines.

Awards:
2000, Marlborough Graphics Gallery prize
1996, Heatherley School of Fine Art, first prize

Publications:
Art Review (June 2000)
Interior and Design - English/Russian edition - (December 2002); SW (October 2003)

Exhibitions:
2005 artevisa, Loguivy de la Mer, France 2004 Salon d’Art Contemporain de Montrouge, Paris Claustrophobia open, Surface Gallery, Nottingham Love in Art, Arndean Gallery, London The figure and the Face, Orleans House Gallery, London Bread and Roses, London A-21 Exhibition, Osaka, Japan
2003 the drawing show, the jelly leg’d chicken art gallery, Reading
What ever the story, Studio Voltaire, London (solo exhibition)
Common fields, Florence Trust, London
100, Studio Voltaire, London
2002 L’enfance sur le fil, Galerie Bertin-Toublanc, Paris, France (solo exhibition)
Pourquoi pas chez toi ? Galerie Bertin-Toublanc, Paris, France
2001 The National Print Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London (and in 1999)
2000 RKBurt Gallery, London
Misplaced, Trinity Gallery, Kent
Camberwell College of Arts, London
5th Open Print Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
1999 The Ring, a South London Gallery Project. Assistant of Thomas Kilpper, 400msq woodcut at Orbit House (Tate Modern collection)
1998 New Arrivals, Royal Society of Arts, London
1997 The Stroke Association’s exhibition, Royal Festival Hall, London
Back to the Future, National Gallery, London
1996 150 years of Heatherley, Mall Galleries, London