The Dreamer of the Forest

For COME CLOSER (2024), Kindersley built a colourful installation in the Middelheim Museum. He made a film there and then performed in which different performers took on the roles of the images. In the script, familiar and fictional stories merge, inspired by theatre history, childhood memories and art historical references.

Kindersley works with friends and family, without strict rules or fixed roles. The film feels like a living painting or a moving tableau vivant. Sculpture, performance and cinema merge into each other. The ‘real’ work lies somewhere between all the categories, roles and versions.

In this multitude of images and versions of the same story, it is sometimes a search as a spectator. The artist also deliberately leads us up the garden path: not to create confusion, but to make us look at the unexpected and the small that emerges in all those variations.

Paul Kindersley (1985, UK) is a multidisciplinary artist from London. He works across performance, film, drawing and ceramics, often exploring themes of gender, identity and popular culture. His expressive work is often playful and provocative. He has had solo exhibitions at Gasleak Mountain and SKIP Gallery and has made films including The Burning Baby. He is also a visiting lecturer and art tutor at the University of the Arts London.