In Sven Kroner’s new series of paintings, the indoor world of his studio merges with outdoor nature in a new way. Kroner creates scenes that challenge the viewer’s perspective by showing corners of a room in which a diorama enclosed by a vitrine is set up.
The diorama as a vitrine gained prominence as a scene in museums to replicate nature, showing taxidermy animals in painted landscapes. But where historical dioramas recreate reality of passed centuries, Kroner's painted contemporary world is a result of imagination. He employs the diorama as an added dimension to shift our perspective between interior and exterior. The landscape enters the interior in different ways.
We see views outside through a window, next to landscape paintings on the wall, landscape scenes from outside that take place inside the vitrine, against the background of a landscape painting. The diorama makes the viewer more aware of the way in which they are looking at a construct. Simultaneously, viewed from the inside, it triggers a confined feeling. The freedom and infinity that nature usually brings, is ambiguously encouraged and limited in this fictional merge of the inner and outer world.
Within these layers, we simultaneously see reoccurring elements of Kroner's earlier work. Aspects such as window views, snowy landscapes, houses, paintings in paintings, and even small details such as a cow overlooking a flooded meadow. But also his characterizing play with perspectives, use of colour and enigmatic way of bringing light into the painting. His painterly invention and skill has built up over the last two decades, accumulating in this new series, whilst entailing new techniques and interpretations of connecting the outside world and the interior are as always, inviting you to explore every perspective, every detail and every brush stroke of Kroner’s creation with your own imagination.