Maria Kreyn’s paintings are a delight. The use of abstract, figurative and textured features is a vortic cloud of colour and shape, containing natural and architectural forms, each of these works eschews common nods to pop and media to present something verging on the timeless. Of note is her palette choices, returning to muted ‘natural’ colours of romantic landscape scenes her work feels tonally at home amongst Casper David Fredrich, Salvador Dali and Tullio Crali. Three artists whose use of shape, motion, texture and abstraction have a close resonance in Kreyn’s paintings. Critically, one might argue that these paintings are too based in past masters to speak in a contemporary world but there’s enough play amongst the elements to sense the artist amongst the influences. Of the many great shows on offer at Venice 2024 CHRONOS demands at a visit.
Exhibition Notes: Maria Kreyn
CHRONOS, a new exhibition of 10 monumental paintings by Maria Kreyn, is unveiled in Venice. Presented by M.O.N. Art Foundation, the exhibition will run until 22 June at the historic St George’s Anglican Church, Venice.
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.
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.
Maria Kreyn, Chronos, will be on show from 16th April to 22nd June at St George’s Anglican Church , Campo San Vio, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy
For more information visit www.monartfoundation.com
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
