Opening Reception Thursday 27 November, 6 – 8pm

The LAB Gallery is pleased to present, The Grand Scheme, new work by Dublin based artist Vera Klute including kinetic sculptures, a 5m high video projection, tapestry and drawing. Themes are inspired by everyday life and utilize familiar objects and imagery. The artist looks at how we perceive the outside world and our place in it, and sees the individual as displaced in its own habitat. Like a natural scientist the artist is attempting to make sense of an often absurd everyday life with its cycles, routines and habits.

This particular body of work looks at the individual within its sociological environment and the behaviour particular to groups. While playfully exploring concepts of group intelligence and individuals merging into a mass, it sees the human subject in a fine balance between herd instincts and the formal confines of social constructs such as the family, sports club or school class.

Contrary to today’s individualist self-image there is still an inherent urge to blend in with the social environment. The artist takes these instinctual tendencies and looks at their emotional consequences. In the artwork the boundaries between the self and the other become blurred. Bodies merge and slice into each other and the movements of the group as a whole turn into waves.

German-born Vera Klute lives and works in Dublin. Since graduating from IADT in 2006 her work has been shown in many exhibitions worldwide and is part of both private and public collections. Most recently her work has been included in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland and the National Self-portrait Collection of Ireland. Recent solo exhibitions include the RHA, Dublin and QSS Gallery, Belfast (both 2014), the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2011), Wexford Arts Centre (2009) and The Lab, Dublin (2006). She has received the Arts Council Bursary Award (2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013), the K+M Evans Award at the 183^rd RHA Annual (2013) and the Emerging Visual Artist Award, Wexford Arts Centre (2009).