GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN
Special opening hours

Thursday 14:00—21:00
Friday 14:00—21:00
Saturday 11:00—19:00
Sunday 11:00—19:00

Maria Naidyonova is a master of the large format with a sensitivity for the line and its inherent emotional power. Her works on canvas are more drawing than painting: sometimes tactile and exploratory, sometimes powerful and expansive, she uses charcoal, pencil and glazed brushstrokes to read the emotional space of the figures depicted. After two years of concentrated work in the studio, the artist is presenting her new works to the public for the first time.

Naidyonova is interested in capturing those moments in which the hidden meanings of everyday life shine through. Series titles such as „Friends & Lovers“ or „Berliners“ indicate how closely her art is linked to the immediate social and urban environment of Berlin, the city in which the Kiev-born artist has lived and worked since 2014. As in other major cities, several million life paths, crises and constant transformations condense every day in Berlin. Every day can be a new fall or a new opportunity. This pulsating field of tension forms the background of experience from which her pictures emancipate themselves. 

The painting „Doomscrolling“, which gives the exhibition its title, shows a voluminous seated female nude on a format of 180 by 160 centimetres, her sad pouting face propped up on one arm and reflected in the display of her mobile phone. The epitome of a contemporary Narcissa? Established in psychology and communication science, „doomscrolling“ refers to the excessive consumption of negative news via digital media. The term has become popular since the COVID pandemic and the increasing global political uncertainties since 2020 — „doom“ meaning fate, misfortune, perdition. The indiscriminate and limitless consumption of unreliable information on social networks can become an addiction and, coupled with the urge for self-affirmation, a self-reinforcing narcissistic cycle.

Female nudes make up the majority of the pictures. Naidyonova explains the importance of working in front of a real model with the need to penetrate the individuality of each person in the artistic process and to be able to capture something inner. For this reason, she does not speak of „models“ but of her „muses“. Looking at them, she examines where and how the body reveals something that touches and tells something about the person. Intimacy and dialogue can arise in just one gesture, one look, one movement.

Living in a time of increasingly unreflected media dependency, especially among younger people, is a major concern for Naidyonova. Interestingly, however, her artistic results are not lurid, provocative or chaotically colourful but, on the contrary, are associated with a classical aesthetic. The artist, who has also had some success with animated films in recent years, emphasises her appreciation of traditional techniques as a starting point for further development and new approaches. As Leo Kuelbs aptly sees it, she is „an example of the past and future existing together in the now.“ Her paintings move between dreamy fantasy („Midday Dream“ 2023), enthusiasm for the erotic dramaturgy of the line („Lovers“ 2024) and quiet humour („Picnic on the Lake“ 2024). „Classical yet contemporary, like Berlin itself, Naidyonova's work is deeply rooted in art history, yet pulsates with a strong current of the present, offering glimpses of what lies ahead.“ (cited ibid.)