Karin van Dam

At first glance, Karin van Dam’s overwhelming, room-filling installations are like a chaotic universe. You get to know them as you would an unfamiliar city, by wandering around in them and absorbing your surroundings. This publication coincides with an exhibition in The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum.
Dutch graphic and installation artist Karin van Dam (b. 1959, Eindhoven) creates full-scale art environments, each referring to a city or a world of its own. In creating her work Van Dam draws inspiration from the legendary novella Invisible Cities, in which Italo Calvino has globetrotter Marco Polo describe imaginary cities.
Van Dam herself is a traveller, constantly on a journey of exploration. She happens on her ‘building materials’ by chance: tubes and drainage pipes, building plastic and sheets of rubber, wool and balloons. These found objects then form the palette of new temporary installations she constructs in unusual spots: in a museum, on the roof of a building or on a street corner.