Polyphony

1 February - 23 March 2018

Polyphony

Polyphony is the interweaving flow of musical voices that are at times contradictory, yet always harmoniously resolved. A melody found in the very construct of people. In her new paintings, New York-based artist Maria Kreyn presents the pictorial thesis that the individual’s mind and desires are polyphonic in essence.

With an old-world sensibility and a contemporary eye, Kreyn deconstructs and remixes classic myths and iconographic tropes using their fables of solitude, martyrdom, and desire to address our understanding of intimacy, gender, and self-identity. Surfaces move softly in and out of definition, setting visceral brush strokes against highly defined passages.

These competing velocities further the work’s sensual stillness and conjure sensations of gentleness vs. aggression, aloneness vs. togetherness, wanting vs. fleeing. The artist creates a dialogue with our present-day emotional conflicts around agency and vulnerability establishing an intimate space, elegantly stitching together a truth-bearing portrait of our world. The exhibition merges together many layers of paintings and sound installations – collective melodies that shape the musical fabric of Polyphony.

There could hardly be a more appropriate venue for the show than Welsh Chapel, a space built in the 1860s, whose use has been constantly reframed and reshaped over the years. A reflection of the evolutionary nature of our journey towards consciousness, where fulfilment was previously found at the base of an altar, and today through an introspective journey, through art.