Vivian Kral

Painter of the industrial archaeology

Factory scene inspired by the Cockerill steelworks in Charleroi

Memory of a world in alteration, Vivian Kral's work is above all rich in forms, in spaces and in games of perspectives.A journey trough the fragile universe of one young and already so accomplished artist...

From the abandoned site of Volklingen in Germany to the Chelsea electric factory, from stores of Tours and taxis to the Wielemans Ceuppens brewery or to the Marly factories of Vilvord, the work of Vivian Kral is like diving in the old-fashioned and fascinating Europe of the industrial era.  Reports of a henceforth pastworld, the painting of the young Belgian artist are profoundly full of poetry : the one created by this gazing upon a today abandoned universe which was  formely made of fire, machines and noises.

The silence of factories

Far from the social demands of Constantin Meunier, Kral is interested in the formal aspect of the place which she patiently discribes.In her labyrinth of learned perspectives and  landscapes of rusts with vertiginious lines, she rather refers to Piranese, in love as she is of monumentality.But if the old master freely play with his imagination in infernal and imaginary prisons, it is in the mazes of the old temples of the indusrialization that the art of the young women gets lost. We would feel like saying that is almost with romanticism ,as much as these paintings exceed the simple description, haunted as they are by the glance put on them by the painter.

If Kral ventures to make the silence of ruins eloquent, she also often  likes giving substance to industries still animated by sulphurous activities of the iron indusry.  From the Cockerill factories in Charleroi, she keeps the almost volcanic aspect of ores in fusion in tubs. Incandescent, this light comes here from the ground. Emptied of the presence of the workers, completely in the power of machines, these paintings enable the public to feel everything  of the fantastic atmosphere which reigns in these places : noises, smokes, dusts.

A misleading realism

Her descriptions are realistic, but only at first sight. Kral takes photos or sketches some drawings on the spot. As soon as she is back in her Brussels workshop, she grants to herself  the freedom to transform what she has seen according to her art . The architectures haunting her memory then become the places of formal games; representation flirts with abstraction, in insane tangles of reflections and perspectives. Here , the artist has added a machine and there, she has enlarged the angle of approach. Accurate and faithful in the depiction of its details, the painting is always transcended to become a universe in itself. The reference to such or such place has only little importance for Kral. Therefore, she only grants a secondary interest to the entitling of her paintings. Factory, workshops, steelworks are to her almost too explicit : her work is mainly the fruit of an internal vision of  reality, which once over, does without reference.

 Attached to traditional supports, the painter reveals her love for the old techniques. She has liked the pastel for a long time, spreading with her fingers, or sometimes also with the paintbrush. Too often considered as a minor art, the pastel offers surprising depictions of materials. Downy or smooth, thickened or linear, every small fragment of the painting speaks about the gestures of the one who has engendered it.

Fragility of an universe

The world described by Kral seems in expectation. Expectation of an inexorable end for the oldest among the Cockerill's factories, expectation of an affectation for the already abandoned sites. They are fragile, threatened by the wear of time and nature which insidiously resumes its rights.You find  this same fragility in another part of the Vivian Kral's current work : the descriptions of the workshops and old shops. Aware of the precariousness of the current artisans, she is indefatigably looking for places which can still be a testimony of this finishing world : an old hardware, a workshop of ironworks or a joiner's workshop. In opposition to her views of factories, people are here centrally placed in her representations.It is undeniably the old people who appeal to her. The vulnerability emanating from them transforms them into a lively, fragile and nostalgic patrimony. With a hint of voyeurism and a touch of tenderness, always served by this technique at the same time masterful and discreet , Vivian Kral appears as the last spectator of this world rich in unusual objects and close to desolation. All her art here lies in the will to create an atmosphere transforming these persons into the characters of a small drama : that of the desintegration of a world in decline.

Isabelle de Pange

The artist in one of her places of preference : the engine room of the Wielemans Ceuppens brewery