Neon Babylon - Kimber Berry & Marie Thibeault

This April Gallery Elena Shchukina will present a showcase of abstract pain9ng by American ar9sts Kimber Berry and Marie Thibeault.

The modern condi2on and our rela2onship with the environment in the modern age is explored by American ar2sts Kimber Berry and Marie Thibeault with a sense of vibrant colour and measured skep2cism.

On show will be works from Kimber Berry’s Plas2c 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 pain2ng is mixed media, combining the ar2st’s use of plas2cs (an ironic and inten2onal nod to the subject maJer) 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 9tle 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 rela2onship between society and nature, exploring man-made structures and destruc2on, 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 chao2c'.

At a 9me when man’s impact upon the natural world is an issue of such global importance, these works possess a certain urgency, reflected in Thibeault’s use of sharp geometry and bold colour, with subjects seeming almost to explode in fragments towards the viewer.

This exhibi2on is underpinned by a dynamic considera2on of a vital rela2onship – that of our society and the world we inhabit. But it also reflects upon the rela2onship between art and the future, forcing us to re-envision the natural world as it rapidly changes all around us. To quote Thiebault:

'Pain9ng has a way of prolonging a visual read by providing a symbolic structure wherein the viewer can nego9ate the past and the future by accessing the present moment. I paint to find a form capable of reflec9ng the paradox and complexity of the world.'