06 october 2023, Flor Linckens
Inside out: the surreal landscape paintings of Sven Kroner
Until 14 October, a solo exhibition by Sven Kroner is on display at Galerie Fons Welters in Amsterdam. The German artist creates contemporary landscape paintings in which he explores the dynamics between interior and exterior spaces and what they represent. Kroner blurs the boundaries between the inside and the outside, between the natural and the artificial. How do we relate to our surroundings, and what does it reveal about our connection with nature? This results in surreal and enigmatic paintings with a subtle dystopian touch. These are artworks that challenge us to take a moment for a closer look — and often evoke a smile.
In the exhibition, for instance, we encounter a painting depicting an attic space, offering a view of neighboring houses. Simultaneously, on the floor, we observe a typical Dutch landscape with meadows and farms, seen from a bird's-eye perspective. Suddenly, the glass roof takes on the appearance of a large greenhouse, symbolising artifice. After all, a greenhouse is essentially a controlled environment where factors like temperature and humidity are regulated. The greenhouse, and by extension, the painting itself, thus symbolize human intervention in the natural world.
Kroner also delves into the artifice of painting itself. Ultimately, every painting is a construct, an expression of the artist's creative imagination. Perhaps that's why his studio, the epicenter for an artist, frequently appears in these works. In an interview with See All This, the artist likens his universe to an aquarium he bought for his daughter: "An artist must also live in a small yet vast universe, where he swims around like a fish. Influenced by memories, books, and images, by the scenery around him."
In other works, landscapes appear to emerge from the floor and walls of his studio. We witness a church atop a stack of books and a viaduct winding its way along a box of books and an inverted painting. Your eyes constantly question what they perceive: are we looking at a view within the image or at a painting within a painting? Scale seems hardly relevant in these works.
The German artist typically works on a large scale, using acrylic paint, with light playing a pivotal role in his creations. Kroner draws inspiration for his paintings from the nature he experienced during his youth in the Bavarian Alps, as well as from the visual language of Romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner. However, in his work, Kroner delves deeper into the impact of human intervention on the landscape. The profound human reverence for the vast and sublime nature, as depicted by the Romantic painters, has, in the 21st century, given way to the idea that nature is malleable and formable.
Kroner studied at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His work has been exhibited at Kunsthalle Manheim, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, the Van Gogh Museum, the COBRA Museum, and Project Space on the Inside. Additionally, his art has been included in various collections, such as the Zabludowicz Collection London, the Sgabello Collection, and the ING Art Collection.
