Persephone by Kirsten Glass at the Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery, London.

David Franchi – Thursday, 4th December 2014.

It is an interesting exhibition ‘Persephone, Queen of the Underworld’ by Kirsten Glass, at Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery, Shoreditch, London.

This exhibition gives an impression of underworld, as soon as you get inside the gallery. The works are made using dark colours, drawn pattern are taken from sacred geometry, reduced is the palette.

The work of this artist is often made overnight in her studio. Kirsten Glass wants to avoid daytime disturbance and feel immersed differently. This working method allows the artist to focus on subjects such as the geometry logic which is transformed into an abstract outcome, conveying the production to Middle -earth area.

Kirsten Glass said: “I feed the paintings this ritual geometry and I kind of dream into them until they begin to transform into something I didn’t design. I’m interested in feeling the pulse or vibration and atmosphere of a painting, so feeling its presence, and I imagine the surfaces as screens or veils or interfaces between you and something beyond a message or verbally expressible meaning. I think Painting is good at that.”

There is a sexual side on these paintings, although it is difficult to clearly define it. The forms represented are definitely coming from feminine subjects located nearby a metaphysical area. There is a hidden message that brings the mind to a sexual feeling, passing through the sacred geometry used.

In the exhibition ‘Persephone, Queen of the Underworld’ there is a hidden thread that goes beyond reasoning. It leads to conclusions of a sexual nature in the form, not so rational, but sensitive, that of the senses, which release the soul of the beholder a slight sense of libidinal pleasure.

In this new series of paintings, all from 2014, the ‘Flowers of life’ pattern, endlessly repeats and produces a multiplicity of possible transformations becoming variously a veil, setting, grid, flow or form.

Glass used the show’s title, ‘Persephone, Queen of the Underworld’, to illustrate the work’s imagined retreat into an underworld, a psychic space where cyclical processes take place.

However, Persephone was a myth that glorified together the value of marriage (six months to the side of the groom), the fertility of Nature (Spring Awakening), the rebirth and renewal of life after death. These reasons made the goddess Persephone particularly popular and venerated.

Maybe the artist would like to produce another series which is more vivid and colorful and gives also the bright side of life.

‘Persephone, Queen of the Underworld’ is ongoing at the Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery, Shoreditch, London, until the 6th December 2014.