Kristin Hjellegjerde company logo
Kristin Hjellegjerde
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Exhibitions
  • Artists
  • Art Fairs
  • Store
  • Press
  • News
  • Video
  • About
  • Contact
  • Viewing Room
Menu

Ralf Kokke : Hooked on Neverland

Past exhibition
9 February - 18 March 2023 London
  • Overview
  • Works
  • Installation Views
  • Video
Ralf Kokke , Hooked on Neverland
View works

Private View : Wednesday 8th of February 2023, 6:00-8 pm London (Wandsworth)

 

An emerald-eyed tiger in a pink forest, a stag and serpent, giant, blue-faced figures and long-legged horses. Hooked on Neverland, Ralf Kokke’s first solo exhibition with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, is a journey into the strange and colourful world of make-believe. 

 

For Kokke, Neverland – the concept of never growing up – is the archetype of paradise as well as a ‘safe garden’ from the struggles and anxieties of everyday life; it is a place that he envisions through his art, but it is also the creative process itself. Many of the images that he paints are inspired by his dreams which he records in words and drawings before allowing the ideas to evolve on the canvas. He works intuitively, allowing one work to lead on to another as if he is building a story. However, while colours, landscapes and characters reappear, his paintings are too elusive in composition and tone to be narrative. Rather than illustrating specific events or activities, they allude to complex interactions and emotional states – nothing is ever quite what it seems.

 

Take, for instance, the painting Still Streams and Lush Flowers which depicts a large, undulating figure and a tiger lying on opposite banks of a river. The setting is idyllic: each bank is covered with long verdant grass and pink flowers while the bright colour tones evoke a sunny day. The painting, as with the others in the exhibition, is striking for the flatness of the composition and the rough texture of the chalk, which as Kokke notes creates a raw ‘almost primitive feel’ similar to cave paintings. But the impression of simplicity or serenity may be misleading: the tiger’s eye glints green while the figure’s body is almost insect-like with three eyes and multiple legs. Is this a vision of a utopia? Or two predators conspiring? 

 

‘In my work, eyes are always a symbol to watch out for something or to pay attention,’ explains Kokke, ‘while multiple features or limbs create a sense of movement or speed.’ In Friendly Foreshadows, we are once again presented with an ambiguous interaction in which a stag looks up at a snake – a symbol of danger and temptation but also femininity and a creative life force – curled around a tree. Here, the stag’s stuttered eyes and fifth leg indicate the shadow movement past or perhaps to come. Did the snake strike at its back or warn of some other threat out of the frame of the painting? As with all of his works, Kokke allows the viewer the freedom to interpret the image or rather to see it, simultaneously, from multiple perspectives. 

 

‘I often long to go back to the comfort of childhood, but that version of the world where everything coexists and is simple and easy is an illusion, which distracts me from what’s really happening or what I’m really feeling,’ says Kokke. The use of the adjective ‘hooked’ in the title is a playful reference to the embittered character of Captain Hook who is trapped in Neverland but also implies the idea of addiction, obsession or single mindedness. For Kokke, making art is an act of compulsion but it is also, fundamentally, about plurality and freedom: the freedom to move fluidly, to think originally and to create boldly.  

 

Related artist

  • Ralf Kokke

    Ralf Kokke

Share
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Back to exhibitions

LONDON (TOWER BRIDGE) 

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery 

36 Tanner Street

London SE1 3LD 

+44 (0) 20 39046349

Tues–Sat: 11am–6pm

 

LONDON (WANDSWORTH) 

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

533 Old York Road

London SW18 1TG

+44 (0) 20 88705225

Tues–Sat: 11am–6pm

 

BERLIN

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Mercator Höfe
Potsdamer Str. 77-87
10785 Berlin

+49 30-49950912
Tues–Sat: 11am–6pm

WEST PALM BEACH

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

2414 Florida Avenue

West Palm Beach, FL 

33401 USA

+1 (561) 922-8688

Tues-Sat: 11am-6pm

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Twitter, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 Kristin Hjellegjerde
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences