The Paradox & The Complexity...Neon Babylon at Gallery Elena Shchukina

The modern condition and our relationship with the environment in the modern age is explored by American artists Kimber Berry and Marie Thibeault with a sense of vibrant colour and measured scepticism.

On show will be works from Kimber Berry’s Plastic Garden series, which considers the human psyche and our

impact upon the natural world. The works are intricately detailed, with dynamic and organic shapes spiraling across the canvas.

Each paintng is mixed media, combining the artst’s use of plastics (an ironic and intentional nod to the subject matter) with paint and digital effects. The result is akin to a heightened and surreal encounter with the natural world, as though we are not only looking at a flower but climbing inside it. Berry’s interest lies in our contemporary expansion into nature, and the blurring of reality and illusion.

The title of one work references the story of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and indeed Berry conjures a similar sense of

the imaginary – and of landscapes teeming with both chaos and magic.

Marie Thibeault’s work also considers the relationship between society and nature, exploring man-made structures and destruction, and combining ideas of breakdown and balance with elements of the sublime.

Thibeault uses these elements, and the tensions between them, to make sense of events and changes that are 'unbounded, excessive, or chaotic'.

This exhibition is underpinned by a dynamic consideration of a vital relationship – that of our society and the world we inhabit. But it also reflects upon the relationship between art and the future, forcing us to re-envision the natural world as it rapidly changes all around us. To quote Thiebault:

'Painting has a way of prolonging a visual read by providing a symbolic structure wherein the viewer can

negotiate the past and the future by accessing the present moment. I paint to find a form capable of reflecting

the paradox and complexity of the world.'

Neon Babylon runs from 21 April until 26 May at Gallery Elena Shchukina, 10 Lees Place, W1K 6LL.

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