The exhibition’s title, 444 days, encapsulates the time elapsed between the inception of the earliest displayed piece and the completion of the most recent. Through this temporal framework, viewers are invited to witness the nuanced development of Kraus’ distinctive artistic language as time weaves its subtle influence through her evolving body of work.

Informed by her background in meditative, yogic, and somatic practices, Kraus’ creative process is distinctly contemplative and reflective.

Faced with the constraints of limited studio space whilst studying at the Royal College of Art in London, she ingeniously conceived a cage-like structure to produce large-scale paintings. This unique mechanism features struts that double as rollers, around which she loops raw canvas. Kraus works within this frame, applying paint to both the rollers and the canvas’ surface. As she pulls the canvas through, the paint smears, spreads, and unfolds, forming patterns that repeat but continually evolve.

Marks and shapes gradually acquire meaning, often exhibiting an organic quality resembling the repetitive–yet never quite identical–motifs found in nature.

On closer inspection, this pattern-like iconography might recall the sinuous texture of snakeskin, a network of veins, or the fluctuations of an electrocardiogram as it records the electrical signals of a heartbeat.

From afar, one might even recognise the warping frequencies and rhythms of a musical score. After removing the canvas loop from the mechanism, Kraus carefully unfastens the stitches and stretches the work.

The act of painting, initially temporal and evolving, is ultimately transformed into a static image—one that pulses, fluctuates, expands, and contracts, containing multiple echoes of its creation.

Kraus’ method is characterised by a fluid oscillation between bursts of spontaneous mark-making and intervals of meditative reflection. To create an organic image within a rigid system requires listening, attention and choreography of movement.

The transportive nature of her paintings act as a portal to an alternate state of being, reflecting a continuous and cyclical universe amidst the tangible and often constrained realities of our existence.

The artist once referred to her work as ‘stochastic’ because of the seemingly random distributions in her process. Recently, Kraus has reached a pivotal juncture in her practice in which she channels her understanding of these unpredictable elements to shape more deliberate movements within the work.

Yet her process remains a delicate interplay of structure and intuition, control and surrender. In navigating this tension, Kraus cannot fully submit to either, as it is within this balance that the organic essence of her work is realised.

Lisa Modiano

BIOGRAPHY

Emily Kraus (born in 1995) obtained her Master’s in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London (2022) and a Bachelor’s in Religious Studies from Kenyon College (2017). Recent exhibitions include: *Ouroboros*, Galería Mascota, Mexico City, Mexico, 2024 (solo exhibition); *Painting As It Were (Painting As Is III)*, Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2024; *Bloomberg New Contemporaries*, Camden Arts Center, London, 2024; *Echoes Across Surfaces*, Duarte Sequeira HQ, Braga, Portugal, 2023; *The Amber Room*, Matt’s Gallery, London, 2023; *Nest Time*, The Sunday Painter, London, UK, 2023 (solo exhibition); *Matija Cop and Emily Kraus*, Sapling Gallery, London, UK, 2023; *Young and Restless*, Stable Gallery, S-chanf, Switzerland, 2023; *A Body of Work*, Grove Collective, London, UK, 2022; *My Mother was a Computer*, Indigo+Madder, London, UK, 2022; and *Shadows*, Stable Gallery, S-chanf, Switzerland, 2022. In 2023, Kraus won the Hopper Prize and was shortlisted for the John Moore Painting Prize.