Details:
① Artwork:
Cantata BWV 140
This painting employs dark grays and blues to depict an hourglass labyrinth inhabited by ghostly figures. The title of the work is a reference to J.S. Bach’s musical composition Sleepers Awake.
Emma Pryde transforms compositions from late Gothic or early Renaissance Italian paintings to create works that feature new allegories and mythologies. The artist employs a limited color palette alongside traditional techniques. Pryde's emotionally resonant paintings depict scenes that simultaneously explore aspects of innocence, childhood and femininity with corruption, spoiling and desolation—asking viewers to question the supposed tension between these traditionally opposing influences.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Emma Pryde’s paintings create new allegories and mythologies by transforming late Gothic and early Renaissance Italian artworks. Employing a limited color palette along with traditional techniques, the artist heightens the emotions implicit in the subject of the historical compositions she borrows from. Pryde’s work explores innocence, childhood and femininity, as well as corruption, spoiling and desolation—forcing viewers to reconcile these opposing tensions in each scene she paints.
BIO:
Emma Pryde was born in 1991. The artist received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2020.
Solo exhibitions of Pryde’s work include: Counterplayer at King’s Leap in New York City (2021); Playset at Mickey Gallery in Chicago, Illinois (2020); and Saecularis at Pretty Days in Rhode Island (2019).
Pryde’s work was shown in a two-person exhibition, Dream Of The Palace at Alyssa Davis Gallery in New York City (2020).
Group exhibitions that have shown Pryde’s work include: Moloch at M LeBlanc in Chicago, Illinois (2022); Hissing Haze at in lieu in Los Angeles, California; Fantasy Finery at Berlinskej Model in Prague, Czech Republic (2020); and My Shed Shaped Heart at Hotel Art Pavilion in Brooklyn, New York (2019).
Pryde lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin.
