Down, Down, Heavenwards - Maria Kremneva
Reflected upside down in puddles on the pavements, ancient European towns appear hanging upon nothing in the sky that opens up beneath our feet. I reverse my subject and take it through stages of transformation to reveal its essence. At the outset, the water medium liquefies the solidity of the buildings, ripples them, and makes them transparent. Then, upturned in the sky, they acquire a celestial quality, and I rework them further by means of my art. Likewise, the edges of the puddle frame the picture before it is reframed by image borders, opening a window inside a window, taking the viewer deeper in. This fragile capsized universe is so much short-lived and I emphasize the vulnerability of its existence. Switching top and bottom, the I put the audience on a great mystical swing of perception and resort to paradox to disclose the truth of the subject, make the spectators see things upside down to rediscover them in their true light, look into the mud to see the purest, into the murkiest to see the clearest, into the cold and elemental to see the grace handed over to us by centuries of humanity.
