Artist: Marlon Kroll
Exhibition title: Receiver
Venue: Acappella, Naples, Italy
Date: September 30 – November 15, 2022
Photography: © Danilo Donzelli / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Acappella, Naples
At its core, my practice is a drawing practice, and more often than not abstract, but I like to think of myself as a figurative painter. Instead of through people and places as they appear, I want to depict my experience and subjectivity through objects and forms; objects and forms that in their peculiarities say something about the body and embodiment.
“Receiver” is focused around the idea that objects and paintings can be spirit mediums. The show uses speaker horns and cones, and the implied form of a trumpet, as motifs, and in this fictional stage play, they are disconnected from amplifiers and electronics, instead receiving and amplifying through their wires the latent voice of spirits that may float through the air.
Four of the paintings depart from the speaker horns they were inspired by, and lean into the horn- like form that lies within their compositions, alluding to spirit trumpets, archaic spiritualist devices said to focus and amplify the voice of spirits. The other two act as figures; one imagines a staircase as a body as it bends over to stretch, and the other imagines the Neapolitan San Carlo theater as a larynx, becoming both the singer and the room it performs in.
The sculptures are basically drawings; confident gestures in three dimensions. Two found objects combine to form another spirit trumpet on the wall, with an egg at its center; two chairs rest on-top of each other, like two sleepers, an egg balanced on one of the feet. On one wall, another chair is suspended upside down, with a speaker picking up signals from the air with another egg balanced on its seam, and on the other wall another speaker does the same.
In this show, the sculptures are both the mise en scene and the actors of their own play.
This show is really about accepting my family and their strangeness, and to find a way to communicate with my mother, who has passed on. She was a fortune teller, faith healer, tarot reader and artist, and finally instead of denying the spiritualism in my family, I am exploring it.
I am hoping to reach my dead relatives, and maybe this work can help you reach yours, too.
– Marlon Kroll
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, Sleepers, 2022, Chairs, egg, chewingum, 120 x 50 cm
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, The conduit, 2022, speaker, electric wires, condom, water, 50 x 30 cm
Marlon Kroll, The conduit, 2022, speaker, electric wires, condom, water, 50 x 30 cm
Marlon Kroll, The conduit, 2022, speaker, electric wires, condom, water, 50 x 30 cm
Marlon Kroll, What was overheard, 2022, Chair, speaker, chewingum, egg, 88 x 48 x 42 cm
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, Brass, metal, egg, 35 x 60 ca cm
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, Brass, metal, egg, 35 x 60 ca cm
Marlon Kroll, Sleepers, 2022, Chairs, egg, chewingum, 120 x 50 cm
Marlon Kroll, Sleepers, 2022, Chairs, egg, chewingum, 120 x 50 cm
Marlon Kroll, Medium (the trumpet), 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 43.5 x 18.1 cm
Marlon Kroll, Stretches, 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 35.8 x 15.6 cm
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
Marlon Kroll, Medium (don’t you try to tell me that it’s rain), 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 35.8 x 15.6 cm
Marlon Kroll, Medium (evil eye), 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 35.8 x 15.6 cm
Marlon Kroll, Medium (the speaker), 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 35.8 x 15.6 cm
Marlon Kroll, San Carlo (the singer), 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 35.8 x 15.6 cm
Marlon Kroll, What was overheard, 2022, Chair, speaker, chewingum, egg, 88 x 48 x 42 cm
Marlon Kroll, San Carlo (the singer), 2022, colored pencil & acrylic on muslin over panel, 35.8 x 15.6 cm
Marlon Kroll, What was overheard, 2022, Chair, speaker, chewingum, egg, 88 x 48 x 42 cm
Marlon Kroll, Receiver, 2022, exhibition view, Acappella, Naples
