Lotta
Blokker

LOTTA BLOKKER - IMAGES

Lotta Blokker has the gift of making her bronzes appear almost to breathe.
She proved it in 2014 in her solo show The Hour of the Wolf at Museum de Fundatie. Keenly observed images of people in the indeterminate zone between waking and sleeping. For me, the absolute highlight was an image of an old lady with Alzheimer’s, whose half-focused gaze went right through me. Visitors still buttonhole me about it and each of them recalls their own favourite.
So what do you do if you can make time stand still, or maybe even turn back the clock, to avert impending disaster?
In recent years, Lotta Blokker has devoted herself to producing images, sculptures, that are a lesson in the communication of injustice and grief. She has sought to uncover the secret of the iconic image capable of instantly changing our perception of war, disaster and injustice.
She works in an intense and personal way, with an unremitting desire to heal, restore or negate all that is intolerable in our world.
Lotta Blokker – SCULPTURES is an exhibition about the Holocaust, Vietnam, famine, 9/11, and refugees. It is concerned with people, victims and powerlessness, but also with the healing power of art.
 
Ralph Keuning
Director, Museum de Fundatie

The Hour of the Wolf in Recklinghausen

During the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghause, one of Europe's largest theater festivals, the sculptures of The Hour of the Wolf will be exhibited at the St. Peterchurch. The exhibition is a collaboration with Telefonseelsorge.

Apostolic Church Münster

Deeply related Käthe Kollwitz & Lotta Blokker
In collaboration with the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin and Haus der Niederlanden.

Haus der Niederlande, Münster

Museum Jan Cunen

Lotta Blokker - The Hour of the Wolf
http://www.museumjancunen.nl
The Hour of the Wolf is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when sleepless are haunted bu their deepest fear. 
It inspired sculptor Lotta Blokker to a group of bronze sculptures in all phases of life.
What happens at night, when the lights go out and the telephone no longer rings? When there are no appointments and the deep silence begins?’
The Dutch sculptor Lotta Blokker (Amsterdam 1980) often pondered over these questions, even as a child, as she lay awake and thought that everyone was asleep but her. Taking these memories as her starting point, she created the series entitled The Hour of the Wolf: nine life-size bronze sculptures that depict the feelings of the sleepless.
The figures from ‘The Hour of the Wolf’ series – on which Blokker worked for five years – transport visitors on a nocturnal journey to various emotions. There is an encounter with an elderly demented lady who is not sure of where she is, with a staring boy pressing his hand against a window, with a young woman who is lying naked and aggravated on the ground ‘While you feel lonely during those sleepless hours, you do not realize that you are sharing this sleeplessness with many others. They, too, lie awake in the darkness, anxious or sorrowful about things that have happened or are about to happen. Or they may be excited and hopeful about what is coming. Whereas daytime provides distraction, the night – agreeably or otherwise – gives the opportunity to retreat into yourself. Your imagination goes on the rampage, ideas bubble up, solutions appear out of nowhere.’ There are no further diversions in the night and feelings can no longer be suppressed. Blokker describes her project as a nocturnal, intimate confrontation with ourself. ‘What I find so attractive in people is their sincere emotion. That is something you feel at night mostly, when people have to fall back upon themselves.’ Her bronzes are more than figures of people of flesh and blood. They are symbolic portraits that function as a mirror, so that we can recognize ourselves.