Cecilia Danell The Upside Down World Opening Reception Thursday 28 May at
5:30pm – 8pm
28 May – 27 June 2026 Kevin Kavanagh Chancery Lane Dublin 8, Ireland
Cecilia Danell, The Upside Down World, oil and acrylic on linen, 190 x 140 cm, 2026
“Last year, during a forest walk in her homeland of Sweden, Danell encountered a lake from her childhood. It was uncharacteristically still. Mesmerised by its reflection and an uncanny sense of doubling, it became the seed and the title painting of the show. These large-scale works ask us to look anew at what’s familiar, at what we think we know about everything we encounter. The sense of being absent from Sweden for so long has led to Danell reimagining its arboreal landscape as a place of contrasts: the hyper-reality of nature, but with an echo of Sci-Fi. In Immensity Made Manifold, an upended tree resembles a multi-tentacled creature. The palette reflects this strangeness – a lilac sky, rose-streaked tree-bark – an accumulation of hundreds of shades. Danell had an early interest in Colour Theory, and believes her work has gotten progressively more experimental with colour over the years. Within these green dome settings, vertical daubs in neon shades appear, which for Danell, represent a gravitational pull. But there are invaders too: hunters who build blinds and desecrate rocks with instructions: Stå Här (‘Stand Here’). In Into the Unknown, an otherwise bucolic scene is interrupted by a yellow arrow defacing the trunk of a tree. Herein lies another conflict: the genuine human need to map and carve out a place in the world, and the artificial, intrusive branding of nature by hunters.”
Extract from An Accompanying Text written by Sinéad Gleeson
