Hamburg - "The Sun Above All" - Works by Stella Meris at Galerie Melbye-Konan

Stella Meris' artistic work revolves around the question of how these sacred spaces might look and be collectively activated, which is why she collaborates with artists from various disciplines. In this context, large-format paintings become stage sets for immersive performances and public events, with the reflection of performative rituals forming the basis for new design approaches. In her search for an undogmatic approach to spirituality, Stella Meris attaches great importance to the interactions of bodily intuition and cognitive work, above all her own bodily perception, which she intensifies through meditative practices, concentration exercises and consciousness-expanding movements. She transfers this bodily experience in space to paper and textiles when painting and continues to have an effect through her stage designs in collective performances and installations.

 

Colours play a very important role in this. The palette is not only very large, but also made of a wide variety of materials from neon spray to acrylic paints and oil pastels to coloured pencils. Stella Meris dispenses with classically spatial painting perspectives, building them up instead through layered forms, through which she develops a childlike, complex, very spontaneous style of painting. With life-size figurative elements, she creates a counterpart for the viewer at eye level. Animals, people, architectural forms reminiscent of sacred buildings, she intertwines and sometimes reduces them to the abstract. All the more her recurring motifs, faces, eyes with large pupils and tears, stairs and houses stand out. Colour surfaces and patterns create emotional fields of tension. The viewer's eye searches for the narrative lines, discovering the joy of unravelling and combining, as in an abstracted picture book. Stella Meri's art is well received. All the works were already sold at the exhibition opening.

 

Stella Meris (*1990) is a painter and media artist from Basel, Switzerland. She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. In 2019, she graduated as a master student with Prof. Valérie Favre. Stella Meris shows her works, performances and videos in solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland and internationally. She won the first prize of the Milan Mobile Film Festival (2018), the sponsorship award of the Maurer-Billeter Foundation (2020), is a scholarship holder of the Hans and Charlotte Krull Foundation (2022). This year she received a Deutsche Bank studio grant and was selected as part of the collective "somebody*ies" together with Anna Byskov, Christina Krys Huber, Hannah Kindler and Nika Timashkova for the Biennale in Freiburg 2023.

 

The exhibition "The Sun Above All" can be seen at Galerie Melbye-Konan until 9 September.

 

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