About Caroline Coolen

Between 1994 and 1998, the Flemish Caroline Coolen completed her master’s degree in Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, followed by a two-year course at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in the same city. In her oeuvre, drawing, sculpture, and architectural aspects are connected with each other. She uses collage, montage, assemblage, and free association as a way to get a grip on reality. She summarizes her impressions from this in her sculptures. Characteristic of her work is the relationship with nature, landscape, and animals. She wants to compress the outside world as one overall impression. By collecting and combining various materials from her environment, Coolen creates sculptures that appear eclectic and sometimes surreal. Despite the apparent arbitrariness of shapes and objects, a sort of self-evident cohesion emerges in her work.

A good example of this is the Flag sculpture that will be shown at ARTZUID. Wherein Coolen models a sober, drooping, draped flag. The flagpole, here a birch tree, is held up by the complex shape of fabric itself. This flag is not loaded with symbols; it belongs to no one and everyone, covers no country or cargo. She hereby inverts all conventions of the monumental. Coolen formulates a fresh and thoughtful response with her expression of grandeur.

Caroline Coolen mainly works with existing and found objects that she edits, transforms, merges into a new context. The birch tree often returns in her work. Very explicit figures evolve into less and less recognizable shapes, realized according to traditional principles in sculpture. A good example is Self portrait with which Coolen enters her work into a symbiosis with its landscape. Human image, animal and flora are brought together here as one compressed, somewhat surreal image of a dynamic, organic whole. The shapes evoke strong associations, but only provide fragments of a story.