5th Anniversary: What Have I Done?
April 16- May 23, 2026
Studio Kroner celebrated its 5th anniversary with What Have I Done?, the first solo exhibition in the gallery by founder Paul Kroner. Featuring more than 60 works spanning sculpture, painting, animation, and mixed media, the exhibition brought together new and past works exploring balance, ambiguity, vulnerability, humor, and transformation through an open reflection on making, responsibility, and creative life.
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Paul Kroner is an award-winning contemporary visual artist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Born a maker, his instinct to create led him into a career in graphic design. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati's Graphic Design program, but his desire to make art was always alive in his heart. Although Paul loved his career as a graphic designer, the pull toward fine art never left him. Eventually, no longer willing to keep his artistic drive secondary, he allowed his studio practice to fully take hold. To deepen his skills, Paul studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, the International School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy, and several other art programs.
Paul's art transcends the boundaries of medium and style. While primarily focused on sculpture, he effortlessly shifts between artistic expressions—moving from representational to abstract and from 2D to 3D. Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of influences—including Picasso, Matisse, Henry Moore, Pablo Gargallo, the Bay Area figurative artists of the 1950s and ’60s, contemporary illustrators and designers, and the world around him—his work explores both intra- and interpersonal dynamics.
Paul is a recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Artist Opportunity Grant, the Cincinnati Summerfair Aid to Individual Artist Grant, winner of the Sculpture category in the Zanesville Museum of Art 78th Ohio Annual Exhibition, 2nd Place Winner in the 2024 Ohio Art League Spring Exhibit, and 3rd Place in the 56th Annual Cincinnati Art Club View ViewPoint nationally juried exhibition. His art has been exhibited in numerous galleries and featured in solo and group exhibitions across New England and the Midwest. Paul’s paintings and sculptures are included in private collections nationally and internationally, a testament to the universal resonance of his creative vision.
He is also the owner and gallerist of Studio Kroner in Cincinnati, OH, which features local, regional, and national artists.
What Have I Done? is a question with more than one inflection. It can be read casually—what have you been up to?—or with doubt and self-interrogation: what have I done… and why? I’ve always made work that resists singular meaning, and this question felt like an honest way to frame the last five years of my life and practice—a period shaped by both conviction and uncertainty.
Since opening Studio Kroner five years ago, I’ve spent much of my energy building a space for other artists. During this period, my own studio practice didn’t stop, but it did change. The work continued to develop, finding its way into the world through grants, exhibitions, and recognition. Those moments of affirmation mattered, but they didn’t quiet the question at the center of this show.
They did, however, sharpen my awareness of how and why I make work. That awareness has made me less interested in maintaining a single approach, and more attentive to what each work seems to require. I let the idea behind each work dictate its form and execution rather than committing to a single style. What connects the work across different approaches is an underlying continuity: a strong sense of design and composition, an ongoing concern with balance, and an interest in relationships—between forms, between figures, and between inner and outer experience. Humor and vulnerability often coexist in this space, allowing the work to remain open rather than fixed.
This exhibition isn’t a retrospective, but it does move across time. New work is presented alongside earlier pieces from my catalog, allowing connections and tensions to surface. Seen together, the works reflect an ongoing interest in ambiguity and accessibility—work that invites entry without insisting on a single interpretation.
At my core, I am an artist and a maker. For me, to create is to question. What Have I Done? isn’t meant to be answered. It’s an open inquiry—about making, responsibility, and what it means to build something for others while continuing to listen to your own inner life.
