Ouroboros
Galería Mascota is pleased to present Ouroboros, first solo exhibition of Emily Kraus in Mexico.
The symbol of a serpent devouring its own tail has represented the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth throughout antiquity among countless cultures, namely Egyptian and Greek. In the exhibition, the ouroboros transfigures into canvas both figuratively and representationally — as interwoven paint and snakelike incisions surround the space.
Ouroboros was made with ten pieces of canvas stitched together into one loop. The loop was then rotated around the mechanism, each individual piece of canvas carrying the trace of the others. At the end of the painting process the canvas was separated and stretched as ten paintings. Some appear coupled, while others insist on a distinct individuality.
The painting on the wall outside this room was not touched by direct application of paint but holds the memory of the paint applied to the other nine segments – it was made by its environment. Each painting in the installation functions both as part of the whole and as a fractal.
Emily Kraus (b. 1995)
Received her Painting MA from the Royal College of Art in London (2022) and a BA in Religious Studies from Kenyon College
(2017).
Recent exhibitions include: Nest Time, The Sunday Painter, London 2023, Echoes Across Surfaces, Duarte Sequeira, Portugal
2023, Matija Čop and Emily Kraus, Sapling Gallery, London 2023, Young and Restless, the Stable Gallery S-chanf, Switzerland 2023, Buffer, Guts Gallery, London 2022, and My Mother was a Computer, Indigo+Madder, London 2022.
In 2023, Kraus won the Hopper Prize, was included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries and was a finalist for the John Moores Painting Prize.