MARIA KREYN - CHRONOS

15 APRIL - 22 JUNE 202
St. George’s Anglican Church, Venice Biennale

"Chronos" beckons you into a realm where time's essence, weather's whims, and our bond with nature are deeply interrogated. This exhibition, curated through Maria Kreyn’s lens, challenges the viewer to confront creation, destruction, and rebirth, reflecting on our complex ties to Earth.

Ministry of Nomads Art Foundation is pleased to present Chronos, a solo presentation featuring the work of Maria Kreyn. Organized by Maria Vega and MoN Art Foundation, this collateral event of the 60th international art exhibition at the Venice Biennale is staged in St. George’s Anglican Church and includes 10 monumental new oil paintings. The exhibition opens Monday, April 15th, and will continue through June 22, 2024, with an opening reception on Tuesday, April 16 from 5 - 10 pm.

CHRONOS welcomes viewers into an immersive meditation on the materiality of time, the turbulent flow of weather, and our essential, fragile human connection with the atmosphere. Maria Kreyn’s landscapes present luminous vortexes in which flat planes of prismatic geometry intersect painterly, atmospheric space. These angular structures lens the canvas, as though folding time-space to coalesce in a central ovoid shape. Invoking the Orphic mythology of the cosmic egg, the haptic energy of Kreyn’s paintings highlights the natural cycle of creation, dissolution, and regeneration. In the Orphic story, the unaging CHRONOS — the embodiment of Time itself — produces Aether, Chaos, and an Egg. This cosmic egg ,emerging from the union of Hydros (the primordial sea) and Ouranos (sky), engenders the source of creation and life. Kreyn links the Orphic egg with embryogenesis — the explosive yet delicate unfolding of life and mind from a foundational state.

Reprising the Romantic tradition, which celebrates the sublime power of nature, Kreyn’s storm paintings are portals into philosophic dreamscapes that are at once playful and foreboding. Bound between abstraction and representation, chaos and calculation, they capture a sense of collective anxiety in the face of extreme weather and climate change — a dazzling vision of a terrifying threat.

MARIA KREYN

October 7 - 16 October

Secteur Privé, 35 Portland Place, London W1B 1AE

Ministry of Nomads is delighted to present Lensing a Storm, a collection of new works by New York based painter Maria Kreyn.

Maria Kreyn is known for evocative paintings that merge masterful figuration, abstract geometries, and elemental atmospherics. Invoking the Romantic tradition, which celebrates the sublime power of nature and space, Kreyn's recent work offers a personal, poetic interpretation of the genre of landscape painting in which the figure is conspicuously absent. Her storm paintings are portals into philosophic dreamscapes that are at once playful and foreboding. 

Situating her works alongside the historic landscapes of the 18th and 19th century, Kreyn's paintings seem to glow from inside their surface, like luminous vortexes where reality and illusion are confused and entangled. Chaotic yet calculated tumbles of sensual paint and color belie a sense of the apocalyptic Sublime, where nature is seen as a beautiful yet virulent force spiraling out of control. The works' pictorial strength lies in these contradictory sensations of the wild and ethereal, energetic and delicate. As a foil to this organic turbulence, Kreyn introduces a geometric vision of a lensed space-a repeating shape that intersects and overlays the world like the lens of the human mind itself, an unstable stamp of the Anthropocene. 

Kreyn's storms take direct root in her painting of The Tempest (commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber as part of Kreyn's 8-painting Shakespeare Cycle, now on permanent display in the lobby of the historic Theater Royal Drury Lane). Her background in highly refined figurative painting provides the sense of drawing and representational rendering that permeates and enhances the abstract marks of her recent work. Her education in mathematics and philosophy, and other interests in neuroscience and mythology, lead Kreyn to atypical connections between disparate fields. She distills these references into a personal vocabulary of forms and geometries that result in hybrid landscapes situated at the intersection of formalism, abstract expressionism, and Romantic painting. Moving fluidly between the abstraction of mathematics and the sensual ecosystems of the natural world, flat planes of prismatic geometry paradoxically intersect deep, atmospheric space. With this distinct and original visual language Kreyn asks, "How would we see the expanse of space if our eyes were a prism, not a sphere?" 

Visit Virtual Gallery for Lensing a Storm here.

ALEJANDRO OSPINA

PARADISE BLOWN

23 JUNE - 28 SEPTEMBER 2023

Ministry of Nomads is proud to present Paradise Blown: the new show by Marco Walker.

Marco Walker is an Austrian-American Artist who studied at Art Center, Los Angeles.Walker's portfolio includes work with French Vogue, Harpers Bazaar & Self Service & most recently he shot & envisioned a campaign for Yves Saint Laurent, Rive Droite '22.This year he has participated in Zona Maco sculpture park in Baja, Mexico and is a regular contributor to the Bombay Beach Biennale, on the Salton Sea, California.

In Paradise Blown, Walker navigates the multifaceted realms of photography, collage, alternative print methods and immersive photographic installations. His newest body of work is an exploration of new technologies mixed with traditional processes and techniques.

ALEJANDRO OSPINA

A SIGNIFICANT MOVE TOWARDS NORMALITY

17 SEPTEMBER 2020 - 17 NOVEMBER 2022

Alejandro Ospina uses mixed media to explore the evolution of our changing relationship with image in the digital age, creating a fusion of the traditional and the neo-technological.  Freezing the digital movement we have become so attuned to into a multi-faceted palimpsest which evokes evolution and change. Ospina creates a collage of subconscious images which find their way into deep corners of our psyche, where they are disentangled and translated into the language of the conscious mind.

Ministry of Nomads presents the works of Colombian artist Alejandro Ospina in a new Virtual Gallery exhibition.  This show exhibits a collection of works, spanning several years of his career.   Our gallery allows his works to become participants in the digital space, in an interactive way, which builds new connections and meanings.

Visit Alejandro Ospina's Viewing Room with works, videos, and more.

MARCO WALKER

PARADISE BLOWN

7 MAY - 7 JULY 2020

Ministry of Nomads is honoured to present the works of Marco Walker in our first Digital Gallery exhibition.  This show features a curated series of Walker's best selling landscape editions, presented in a one-of-a-kind digitall modelled environment.

Marco Walker's works manipulate and embrace colour in an act of reclamation.  Reclaiming all environments: the lost, the imaginary, and even the ubiquitous.  Regardless of their origin, Walker transforms them, mobilizing photography, alternative print methods, and collage to create places which are distinctly their own.  Connected to their origin but also unique departures from it.

Walker's use of colour to evoke the sense of escapism brings his works to the forefront of their environments.  His works actively project themselves into the environment around them, acting not only as a feature of their space - but as a participant in shaping it.  

View works and more information in the Viewing Room

CARLOS JACANAMIJOY

SOLO EXHIBITION

1 - 30 APRIL 2020

Jacanamijoy's works evoke a deep connection to the memories, heritages, and environments which shape us.  Drawing from his background as a member of the Indigenous Inga people of Colombia, Jacanamijoy mobilizes the western oil painting tradition in a novel way, intertwining his own unique themes and transforming the medium into something which is distinctly his own.  Confronting the presumptions around indigenous art and using his works to formulate a dialogue between western and indigenous cultures. Jacanamijoy's works are distinctly his own, but are intrinsically tied with a message of unity and the universal experiences which mould and bring us together.

Ministry of Nomads presents a collection of Jacanamijoy's works from 2010 - 2018 in this exhibition, available on Artsty, and presented in our digital gallery space.

IVAN RICKENMANN

ARTSY ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

1 MARCH - 1 APRIL 2020

Ivan Rickenmann born in Bogota, Colombia in 1965, is a notable Latin American artist. Upon first sight, Rickenmann’s drawings can be mistaken for photographs, such is the detail in his work. Much like the art of Gerhard Richter, Rickenmann manages to capture objects as frozen moments, caught in the motion of time. His strokes are reminiscent of the cadence of Francis Picabia and the compositions of Kurt Schwitters; but his personal quest is developed in elements added from the Pop and Kitsch movements, seen particularly in his paintings of wires. Such images contain an almost dreamlike quality, as if they are a memory of the future, where old is linked to the dream to give us the basic and essential image of contemporary life. Yet despite all comparisons with other artists Rickenmann’s work enters a domain of its own in his rain swept scenes of city skylines. His work, often described as capturing ‘la vie cotidiene’, imbue simple daily used objects and skylines with an sense of importance and grandeur.

MISHA MILOVANOVICH

ARTSY ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

4 FEBRUARY - 4 MARCH 2020

Misha Milovanovich is a Belgrade-born artist living and working in London.

Misha works across several mediums, from sculpture to painting and live art. Characterised by vivid colour, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, Misha's visual work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms. She often features discarded shards of consumerism - unloved icons of disposability and careless consumption.

JUAN MEJIA

ARTSY ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

19 JULY - 19 AUGUST 2019

The work of Colombian artist and architect Juan R Mejía reviews the sensorial perception of the informal city and de-construccion of urban elements. The consciousness of the eye relates architecture to the image, exterior and interior spaces, the re-construction of volumes, perfection and subtlety expressed in cuts and folds, the austerity of form and the precision of the line. His sculptures come from valuable elements of minimalist connotation; intentional lines, accents, rhythms and games of full and empty spaces. On the emphases of securing a compositional balance, the research with different materials, techniques, textures and colors, the limits of the pictorial and spatial language define immaterial spaces that are always marked by the rigor of order and geometry.

NACHEV

SOLO EXHIBITION

8 APRIL - 8 MAY 2019

A pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in art, Nachev constantly challenges the notion of conceptual art, resorting to engineering and science to create works that travel beyond what the human artist is capable of conceptualizing.

“It is a commonplace that the void art fills is the content, but when it comes to conceptual art the void is also the method. For to say your chisel is concepts is to say barely anything at all. How far can that generality be pushed? One hard limit we come against is the biological, that which lies behind concepts, for it is tacitly presupposed by their possibility. I use tools drawn from my experience as a neurologist and a neuroscientist to try to go behind the conceptual, deeper than any moves on the surface can disclose, into the biological most of us can neither see nor ever hope to escape from." – Nachev

Ministry of Nomads Art Gallery presents Nachev’s body of work, from 2013 to this day, for a focus on the electrifying affiliation between Art and Science, which we are seeing more of with the rise in machine-made art.

In ‘Lidless’, Nachev collaborated with Doug Foster to put together an HD video installation of a moving eye, seeking to communicate with their audience on a level that does not belong to the conceptual, societal or symbolic but to the purely biological. Nachev appeals to a part of our brain called the amygdala, which directs us to look for eyes in everything we see and more specifically the white parts of the eye, where we can detect fear. What is fascinating is that the artistic purpose ends there, exposing the public to the whites of an eye – the seemingly less interesting part of our visual organ – simply to communicate with his audience on a biological level, to flick that ‘fear’ switch in their brain.

‘At Nemi’ was a video installation in a collaborative show put together by Ministry of Nomads called ‘Revelata’. The four artists drew on their disparate skills to create works that give body to power through atomic elements, creating installations that ignite and extinguish people, building, artefacts, music and ideas.

Nachev’s most powerful work, the series ‘Canonical’ is a striking demonstration of the use of AI in art. Nachev trained an algorithm to generate portraits that are a synthesis, a canonical, of multiple individuals belonging to a group with a common characteristic. This way, he creates a single portrait of the assembling of all the Nobel Prize winners or of thirteen million dollars’ worth of paintings containing the image of Christ sold at auction. With these portraits, Nachev challenges the notion of conceptual art by arriving at the universality that artists strive for with the brute force of a machine creating inexistent faces that are not only grounded in reality but exhaustive of it.

CANTO RODADO (BOULDER)

21 SEPTEMBER - 1 NOVEMBER 2016

The first-ever UK exhibition for cerebral Colombian abstractionist Mario Vélez

Ministry of Nomads and Gallery Elena Shchukina are delighted to announce Canto Rodado (Boulder), an exhibition of painting, drawing, and sculpture by Mario Vélez, opening 22nd September 2016.

With a field of reference that spans Colombian history from the pre-Columbian era through today, Mario Vélez interprets Latin American visual culture through the lens of abstract and expressionist art.  His work lies in the tradition of geometric abstraction pioneered by Kandinsky and Af Klint, but his idiosyncratic motifs and colour choices are inspired by the natural and built environments of Colombia.  He balances a cerebral focus on formal geometry with a playful, organic use of shape and colour.

Mario Vélez describes his artistic aim as being ‘to reconnect, in some ways, to the primeval status of our culture – to embrace once more the essence of the past.’

Vélez builds on the paradigm established by early Latin American abstractionists such as Joaquín Torres García and Alfredo Hlito, who synthesised elements from indigenous and modernist art to create a new, post-colonial visual lexicon. His fusion of multiple artistic traditions reflects his belief in art’s ability to transcend national, temporal, and linguistic barriers.

In Vélez’s words, ‘our common heritage is… a sensation that survives in ourselves, and is transmitted by the medium of painting’.

ALTITUDE THREADS

14 NOVEMBER - 12 DECEMBER 2015

MON Art Foundation presents the Emerging Bolivian Artist Award exhibition featuring works by winner Liliana Zapata and finalists Jose Arispe and Jose Ballivian.

The Emerging Bolivian Artist Award was launched in January 2015 in collaboration with the Bolivian Embassy in London with support by The Falcone Foundation. This prize grants emerging artists in Bolivia the opportunity to showcase their work in London.

Over 200 applications were assessed by a jury panel, composed of Saatchi Gallery Senior Director Philly Adams and Flora Fairbairn as well as art practitioner and founder of Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, Shwetal Patel and Bolivian gallerist Mariano Ugalde of Salar Gallery in La Paz.

Selected works by Bolivia’s most important artists Sonia Falcone and Gaston Ugaldecomplete the showcase of the nation’s contemporary art culture.

Special thanks to the Bolivian Embassy in London, The Sonia Falcone Foundation, Agwa De Bolivia, Philly Adams, Flora Fairbairn, Seth Stein Architects, Fair & Co, Shwetal Petal and Mariano Ugalde.

CANONICAL

13th October - 19th October 2014

Canonical was an exhibition produced with neurologist Parashkey Nachev to in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health. This exhibition supportsed funded translational research project to develop a clinical system for detecting anomalies in brain scans with the aid of machine-learning (HICF-R9-501).

Parashkev Nachev is a neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist at UCL and its hospitals, who has applied his skill to the problems and possibilities of conceptual art.

“Inside the citadel of rational analysis is here redefined imaginative synthesis. A new series of works reverses the conventional arrow of creativity, extracting ideal, canonical human forms not from the imagination but directly from thousands of concrete particulars, by brute force, synopted through a humanized machine. In transforming the idea of the imaginative we transform the idea of the biological, revealing it to be intelligible only when viewed as a human being looks upon another.”
- Parashkev Nachev

REVELATA

18th October - 12th November

 Revelata was a one-off event working with Milk & Steel, Ansuwan Biswas and architect Adriana Natcheva. 

Inside a sacred grove lit by glass, copper and skin, there will be viewed and destroyed a 1200 square foot steel mandala. The act of contemplation shall be the fact of termination.

A set of collaborative works giving body to power through atomic elements that irresistibly reveal it. Its four, very different, creators draw on their disparate skills in igniting and extinguishing people, buildings, artefacts, music, and ideas.

AQUALIBRIUM

OLIVER BARNETT

Edison House, London,

September 13th- October 3rd, 2013

Ministry of Nomads is delighted to present AQUALIBRIUM. Oliver Barnett’s photographs  intend to explore and unite scientific and spiritual realms to invoke balance in the way humans interact with nature.

“Having dedicated much of the last 5 years to walking and observing in and around Table Mountain National park, these artworks emerged from consistent inquiry into the evolution of human consciousness and its relationship to the natural world. The resulting body of work intends to provide tools to connect to a collective perception of the environment and find new ways to enjoy and share the natural habitats that sustain and nourish life.”  Oliver Barnett

TRANSMUTATION

Hoxton Gallery, London,

November 21st- December 4th, 2012