Kirsten Glass Paintings: EXPO Chicago 2022

7 - 10 April 2022

Kirsten Glass
Beltane, 2019–20 (detail)
This viewing room coincides with Karsten Schubert London’s solo presentation of work by Kirsten Glass at EXPO Chicago. Shown together here for the first time, this group of paintings offers a comprehensive overview of the artist's distinctive style.

Kirsten Glass is known for making large-scale, evocative paintings with multi-layered narratives. Her paintings are worked and reworked over many hours waiting for a transformative moment where the unexpected harmony of elements emerges or as she describes it: 'until something takes over and the painting makes itself'. The four monumental paintings here – Daffodil (2011), Kittens (2017), Ermine with a Lady (2017) and Vesica (2017) highlight the artist’s interest in painting as a spiritual practice, where, in her own words; "a porous quality of external energies invites the viewer to engage with animism and magic".
My admiration of three of the large paintings we will show in Chicago — Vesica, Kittens and Ermine with a Lady — has only grown since I first saw them in Kirsten Glass’s studio in 2019. Exhibiting them together at EXPO Chicago will provide an opportunity for us to introduce Glass to a new audience inviting them into the multifaceted worlds conjured by her rich use of paint, with its thick impasto, incised lines and enticing textures. By constantly moving the canvas, these narratives with female figures and what we might perceive as their animal familiars, are always interrupted. The end result reminds me of dreams, at once earthly and cryptic, spiritual and wry.

CeCe Manganaro

Karsten Schubert London Exhibitions Director
Kirsten Glass
Daffodil, 2011
Oil and acrylic paint on canvas
275 x 168 cm | 108 1/4 x 66 1/8 in

Daffodil (2011) is the earliest work on display at EXPO Chicago and marks an important step in Glass's career as it links her early, youthful work, that gained her wide recognition in the late 1990s, with her more recent layered compostitions. The collaged face of a model cut out from a magazine, set against a geometrical underlying structure and expressive fields of swirling paint confidently portrays a ritualistic, esoteric world.
Kirsten Glass
Kittens, 2017
Oil paint and wax pencil on canvas
274 x 183 cm | 107 7/8 x 72 1/8 in

The lustrous black background in Kittens (2017) serves to hold an assembly of seemingly mismatched components in place within a dream world of creatures, repeated figures, everyday objects and abstract shapes. The Flower of Life pattern from sacred geometry is used as an under-netting while stock images of animals and silhouettes disrupt notions of scale. The complex relationships that exist between these decontextualised elements and the distorted sense of scale and perspective are held together through the tension of an enduring collage mentality.
Kirsten Glass
Ermine with a Lady, 2017
Oil paint on canvas
274 x 183 cm | 107 7/8 x 72 1/8 in

One of the most significant developments in the artist's work can be seen in her depiction of deliberately anonymous figures. Their once provocative stares and poses replaced with a spectral presence, at times hardly visible, as seen in Ermine with a Lady, or in Kittens, with its seemingly fossilised figures emerging from the background as if they were conjured by the viewer.
Kirsten Glass
Vesica, 2017
Oil paint, acrylic, sand and embroidery thread on canvas
260 x 173 cm | 102 3/8 x 68 1/8 in

...Kirsten has always been able to enter that liminal space between awake and mid-dream in her painting. This atmosphere in her work makes me think of Symbolist painters of the 19th Century like Franz von Stuck and Gustave Moreau. Never approaching pastiche, the resemblances occur in her themes, light and mood.

Steven Gontarski
The visual and physical differences in these works are held in a harmonious balance with each painting possessing its own sensual logic and unexpected sense of presence. The same aesthetic harmony is evident in the artist’s small-scale work; head-sized canvases infused with the boundless energy of a liminal landscape. These paintings, although smaller in scale are as deeply engaged with the artists interests and influences. Dark and highly textured, they succinctly capture the same dreamlike logic through their many physical layers. Resonating with rich jewel-like colours - ochres, Prussian blue and permanent rose, which, applied with sensual blending alongside the fine lines of a scratched compass, add to the pleasure of textural interplay.
small works on canvas
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Glass is inviting us to look at an enchanted world, step into a ritual, reconnect with the old ways of folklore, animism and magic. She wants the viewer to find pleasure in her paintings and to experience them as fictive worlds with their own life force. For Glass, painting allows for a transmutation of ideas and emotions, finding connections between the material, the imaginary, and always hinting at the unknown.
Our instincts as children, our animism, these are abilities we’re forced to unlearn to be part of consensus reality. I think artists have the opportunity to keep hold of that sense of enchantment as adults.

Kirsten Glass
In the studio

Kirsten Glass lives moments away from her studio which is filled with books and objects that reflect her engagement in occult and pagan spiritual practices. We asked the artist to share some images from her studio that might offer a glimpse of how these objects spill into her work-space and ultimately into her paintings. Accompanying these photographs is the artists personal April playlist, providing an audio insight into some of her musical influences.
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Kirsten Glass's April Playlist

Listen to the music Kirsten Glass plays in her studio.
About Kirsten Glass

Kirsten Glass (b. Belfast, 1975) attended Chelsea College of Art, London (1993–1996) and Goldsmith’s College, London (1998–2000). Her solo shows include Youthinkyoufuckinslick, Alfred Camp, London (1999); Ace Gallery, Los Angeles (1999); Habitat, London (2000); One in the Other, London (2001, 2004); Hales Gallery, London (2006); The Body in the Library, V22 Ashwin Street, London (2007); A Spritz of Absinthe, Xero, Kline and Coma, London (2012); Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, HIX ART, London (2015) and Swimming Witches, Karsten Schubert London (2020). Glass has participated in numerous high profile group exhibitions including, Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (2001); Becks Futures at The ICA, London (2002) and Electric Dreams at the Barbican, London (2002). She has taught at The Slade, Goldsmiths and Chelsea and is an associate mentor for Turps Banana.
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Kirsten Glass Paintings: EXPO Chicago 2022

Kirsten Glass

CeCe Manganaro

Karsten Schubert London Exhibitions Director

Steven Gontarski

small works on canvas

Our instincts as children, our animism, these are abilities we’re forced to unlearn to be part of consensus reality. I think artists have the opportunity to keep hold of that sense of enchantment as adults.

Kirsten Glass

In the studio

Kirsten Glass's April Playlist

About Kirsten Glass

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Karsten Schubert London

46 Lexington Street

London W1F 0LP, UK

tel: +44 (0)20 7734 9002

[email protected]

Room 2 (Exhibition Space)

44 Lexington Street

London W1F 0LW, UK

Opening Hours:

Tuesday–Friday, 11am–6pm; Saturday, 11am–5pm

Ridinghouse

46 Lexington Street

London W1F 0LP, UK

tel: +44 (0)20 7734 9008

[email protected]

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