Watercolour, pencil on paper, 47 x 60 cm

 

Pen, watercolour, pencil on paper, 47 x 60 cm

 

Ink, paint, colour pencil on cut paper, 27 x 35 cm

 

Ink, paint, pencil on cut paper, 27 x 35 cm

 

Ink, paint, colour pencil on cut paper, 27 x 35 cm

 

Watercolour, pencil, ink on paper, 47 x 60 cm

 

Watercolour on paper, 11 x 15 cm

 

Watercolour on paper, 47 x 60 cm

 

Oilbar, watercolour, ink on paper, 112 x 150 cm

 

Oilbar, watercolour on paper, 112 x 150 cm

 

Pencil on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm

 

Pencil on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm

Karin Janssen’s latest series 'Silent Screams in the Valley of Uncanniness’ are at the same time uncomfortably strange and uncomfortably familiar, playing fool with our sense of familiarity, creating unsettling images where instincts are led astray and we are left abandoned in our own world of connotations and gut reactions. The images seem to show us growths, and especially since these growths are relating to the physical body, they reminds us of deformations and tumours, which we instinctively reject. Not shying away from the abject, Karin’s work researches how crude emotions can alter the appearance of the physical body, causing one’s internal world to become externally visible by changing and transforming the body.

'Silent Screams in the Valley of Uncanniness’ is an extensive, on-going project of over a hundred drawings and paintings ranging from 112 x 150 cm to A6, and in media as diverse as oil bar, pencil, watercolours, collages and paper cutting. The series was kick-started whilst Karin was curating the exhibition RAW SKIN in her gallery Karin Janssen Project Space, and she continued her visual research during the GROWTH exhibition.