Conny Maier: Feels like rabies

About

In Feels like rabies, Maier presents luminous figurative oil paintings that explore fundamental questions about human nature, ecology, dominance, and control. The works are populated by misshapen figures who seem out of sync with their environment, as if their physical contortions and myriad protuberances might prompt them to topple over at any moment in their cruel struggle for ascendancy over nature and other beings.

Maier’s paintings are characterized by an intense expressiveness. In Dynamik, nine figures come together to form a pulsating mass: a jumble of bodies, hands pulling fabric, and long rivers of tears. The figures who inhabit the work convey an ambiguous bundle of emotions—they could be experiencing paroxysms of extreme grief, struggling to hurt one another, or both. The term dynamic indicates a form of continuous and productive activity or change and Maier nods towards the delicate balance between anguish and brutality in many of her works. A figure cowers in anticipation of being struck in the painting with full intention. The figure towering above them, hand raised, balances two golden apples while a serpent slithers around their ankle. Emphathic white scribbles emanate from the standing figure’s mouth, as if raining down insults or expletives at the person crouching below them.