Ella Kruglyanskaya “Shadows” at Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Entitled “Shadows”, Kruglyanskaya’s exhibition will assemble a group of new paintings and drawings that both honour and question the legacy of the artists and experiences that have shaped her practice. Drawing on the works of Josef Albers, Édouard Manet, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Anthea Hamilton, René Magritte as well as the numerous representations of odalisques in art’s history, Kruglyanskaya’s new works explore the nature of artistic influence and the enduring conversation about the future of painting.

Kruglyanskaya’s many frames of reference encompass textile design, graphic arts and the histories of painting. These histories are often amusingly reformulated within large-scale portraits which combine cartoonish and sardonic figures with elements of still life, playing on the tradition of memento mori. In Everyone and Their Mortality (2024) Kruglyanskaya translates contemporary ideograms into trompe l’oeil, and places these symbols in familiar art historical scenes, wherein her humour undercuts scenes of emotional tension or confrontation.

In her new body of work, the long shadows cast by the light entering Kruglyanskaya’s New York studio reframe the images created by her painterly influences, or are dappled across rushing female figures and overlaid with references to technology, both evolving and obsolete. These acts of homage are destabilised by satirical or double entendre titles that call into question our contemporary ways of seeing and making.

at Thomas Dane Gallery, London
until May 3, 2025