James Krone Biography

Having previously made sculptures by hanging plastic golden belts from nails, ashtrays from hollowing found tree branches, paintings from a quartet of patio chair cushions, a commercially manufactured Waterhome aquarium was the next object of banality to enter Krone’s lexicon. Using it procedurally as a relocation of ego, the paintings (referred to as Screens) were developed to mimic not just the production of algae in the tank but also the behaviour of its ongoing state of production and how the viewer is placed in perceiving what is being represented. Painted as monochromes, the shadowed spaces, the reversed side of the painting is where the mimetic effect occurs. The side of the painting that occurs blindly appears to be more expressive than the monochromatic surface of the paintings face. The Screens perform as a comparative model for Krone’s representation of the aquarium to the aquarium, dissolving any fixed position of subject to object, interior to exterior.

Ceremonial Painting acts as a metronome for Krone’s practice through a self-reflexivity that embedded in the repetition of a private ritual through casual maintenance. In their making, a palimpsest of historical gestures negate one another just as they begin to register individually.  As each painting resembles the preceding painting, an idea of prior or latter ceases to have any meaning. This anachronistic repetition of gesture transforms the historical chorus into white noise for the sake of experiencing time as present.

Krone’s spell paintings, painted in perfume and then lit on fire, commence from approaches to spellcasting from the 1970s practices of Chaos Magic, a non-theistic practice where the medium is the plasticity of belief itself. Like a Surrealist language game, Krone records the letters from a written desire and as they occur in that sentence he paints (with perfume) each letter overlying the next before setting the work alight. The actual spells that come from a constantly replenishing surplus of desires are forgotten by the artist and can never be retold. The artist and the viewer are both left with the sigil or sign, an otherwise illegible text. The concrete abstraction, the slowly dissipating odour of the perfume and the trace share of language that has refused transfer remain.

Situated neither as autonomous nor as metaphor, Krone’s work provides a tangible, if materially theatrical, experience to the more abstract questions of how varying systems of representation alter and emit the ideas of meaning. Inherent to the work is a critique of aesthetics from the politics of the sign, in a variety of settings whether they might be applied to private life or to the canons of art history.

Krone’s work has been the subject of various exhibitions, with recent solo shows including An Ornithology for Birds at Kavi Gupta Chicago; Words like Parrots at Marie Kirkegaard Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark; Catsuit for Men at Night Gallery, Los Angeles CA; Waterhome: We Is Somebody Else at the Brand New Gallery, Milan; Waterhome at Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin and Sea of Crisis at Infernoesque, Berlin. Recent group shows include The Politics of Surface Part I, curated by Alex Bacon, at Berthold Pott, Cologne; The White Album, curated by Gladys-Katherina Hernando, at Richard tells Fine Art, Los Angeles; Unfinished Season, curated by Marc LeBlanc, at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne and Almost Something, Not Quite Nothing… at Ambach and Rice, Los Angeles. Krone has worked on several curatorial projects some of which include Picture the Cricket’s Legs Apart at Kavi Gupta Chicago (2015),  Adult Contemporary: Family Romance with Marc Leblanc at Kavi Gupta, Berlin (2011) and Bacchus Apotheke with Marc Leblanc at the 1st Berlin Kreuzberg Biennial (2010).

His work has featured in a wide range of both national and international publications such as Hunted Projects, Monocle, Modern Painters, Mousse Magazine, Artforum, ArtUS, and ArtSlant.