Night Gallery is proud to present a series of Spell Paintings in the portrait gallery by Berlin- based artist James Krone. Using various counterfeit perfumes from which the paintings take their names (Catsuit for Men, Misty Cherry, Leather Woman...), Krone writes scented spells onto raw canvas. These canvases are then lit on fire, and although the stacked letters that spell out the various incantations are protected by the alcohol in the perfume, the negative space between them becomes charred by flames. In Krone’s work pyromancy gives formal presence to otherwise invisible inscriptions, creating an aesthetic rhetoric of abstraction that can only be communicated, accepted or rejected by primal, aphasic tendency.
James Krone (b. 1975 in Chicago, IL) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe at venues such as Brand New Gallery in Milan, Italy; Kavi Gupta in Chicago, IL, and Berlin, Germany; and Country Club in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been written about in publications such as Monocle, Modern Painters, and Mousse Magazine. Krone is represented by Kavi Gupta.