Ministry of Nomads Art Foundation (MON) presents Maria Kreyn’s solo exhibition CHRONOS: ten monumental new oil paintings by the American artist, installed in the historic St. George’s Anglican Church (Chiesa di San Giorgio) in Venice.
A collateral event of the 60th international art exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia, the exhibition is curated by Maria Vega and MON Art Foundation and runs from Monday 15th April to Saturday 22nd June 2024, with an opening reception on Tuesday 16th April.
Heightened by the ecclesiastical setting of an active Anglican church, CHRONOS immerses the viewer in a meditation on the material nature of time, reflecting on turbulent weather systems and our fragile human connection with the atmosphere.
Kreyn’s latest body of luminous, large-scale landscape works combine the artist’s signature crisp brushwork and angular lines with dramatic movement and flourishes of colour. This new suite of oil paintings is inspired by ancient Greek mythology, the omnipotence of the elements of nature, and the climate crisis.
Birth – The Cosmic Egg
Across several works, a recurring motif of ovoid shapes invokes the Orphic creation myth, according to which the god Chronos — the personification of time and the first living being — spawned Aether (Ether), Chaos, and a cosmic silver egg. The cosmic egg – a metaphor for creation and potential found in many other cultures to explain the birth of the universe – becomes a powerful symbol for Kreyn, to contemplate the possibility of regeneration, renewal, and change.
Moving from bright bursts of lights, other works employ a menacing, fiery palette to herald a more troubling, but equally compelling, visual experience. Kreyn reprises the Romantic tradition and its celebration of the sublime power of nature in works that are both playful and foreboding, landscapes that evoke sea and sky, chaos, and calculation. These otherworldly works capture a sense of collective anxiety in the face of extreme weather and climate change — a dazzling vision of a terrifying, looming, universal threat.
About Maria Kreyn
Maria Kreyn (b. 1987) is an American artist known for evocative, large-scale paintings merging figuration, abstract geometries, and elemental motifs. A graduate of the University of Chicago where she studied mathematics and philosophy, Kreyn is self-taught in painting, though her work draws on metaphysical and polymathic connections between disparate fields. Drawing on classical Western painting techniques, Kreyn’s hybrid compositions are rooted in formalism and Romantic painting. Deriving her technical foundations from Old Masters, Kreyn reframes these techniques and infuses their pictorial approach with her own stirring emotional narratives, unique personal histories, and surreal fictions.
Maria Kreyn Paintings
Kreyn’s public works include The Shakespeare Cycle, a collection of paintings based on The Bard, commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, now on permanent display at London’s historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Kreyn lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
MON ART FOUNDATION was founded in 2023 by London-based art dealer and independent curator Maria Vega. Between 2008 and 2020, Vega curated and staged numerous presentations, organising debut solo exhibitions in the UK for many artists. Her long-standing commitment to the career development of emerging artists has led to placements in major collections worldwide. In 2023, Vega established the MON ART Foundation with the mission of facilitating collaborations among artists, scientists, and activists, empowering those whose practices are concerned with addressing the urgent challenges of climate change to inspire environmental stewardship.
www.monartfoundation.com
https://mariakreyn.com
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