Maria Wæhrens: Ash Wednesday

We are proud to present Maria Wæhren's (DK) second solo exhibition in the gallery, this time with the title Ash Wednesday. The paintings, which alternate between large-scale series of violent gestures and smaller works that are intimate, all enclose the viewer in a wealth of abstractions and contrasting colors and depths. The works can be perceived as a sensory precision of Wæhren's dreams that questions human complexity, imagination, and identity.

Wæhrens special ability for composition through balance and prioritizing of the image surface is surprising. She creates new imagery through her wild expressionism and precise coloring, that varies both in pace and distance. Sometimes suggestive figures appear and other times everything dissolves in quick brushstrokes. One example of this is the five meters wide painting The Engle (2023), where the curious eye and mind will find wings, hands and possibly much more. The title Ash Wednesday derives from the Catholic solemn reminder of man's mortality and the need for reconciliation with God. However, Wæhrens paintings are not a visual representation of a specific religion, but rather a visual and sensuous pressure wave that directly confronts our notions of what a painting is and can do. Wæhrens' immediate contact with her subconscious leaves clear traces on the canvas, and so does the heavy movements of the body. Sometimes violent – other times gentle and poetic. 

Ash Wednesday, Wæhrens' second solo exhibition in gas9gallery, and can be seen as part II of her prior exhibition Tradition, on show October last year. Here Wæhrens presented previous works from 2018, that showed her interest in absolute presence, intimacy and grotesque/anxiety-filled imagery. These works are aligned with CoBrA and punk and exist in between the poetic and violent. The paintings gave the audience a feeling of being in the presence of an inner force that exposed Wæhrens' emotions directly on the canvas.