© Sonia Szóstak
The figurative painting by Kornel Zezula.
«I paint the light that comes from all bodies,» a statement by Egon Schiele that forms part of the artistic inspirations that Kornel Zezula nourishes in his work. The portraits of this talented young artist born in Wroclaw in 1991 and graduated in fine arts from Paris indeed radiate a sensuality that uniquely and intimately illuminates the faces and bodies that open up to the mystery of the other.
An artistic practice with multiple influences.
Insatiable by an artistic culture that takes him towards literature, cinema, painting and sculpture, Kornel Zezula is imbued with the richness of the nuances of the human being. If painting is his language, it is because words will always fail to approach the elusive singularity of the depth of the human being. This other who eludes us irretrievably, the artist suggests, between veil and unveiling, through an aesthetics that gives a glimpse of a part of that unfathomable and fleeting interiority. A play of transparencies that reveals the entire density of the emotions that surface the skin of a face and the contours of a silhouette. For Kornel Zezula, painting is about bringing an almost cinematic light to the movement of an inner life irreducibly tormented by contradictions, paradoxes, dualities, and tinged with a certain strangeness. To compose his portraits, the artist summons inspirations that intertwine, subterranean and intangible. It is the way of a photographer like Peter Lindbergh to place the lens on the subjectivity of his models, relegating the artifices of staging to the background, while the soul appears without any embellishment. Sublimating the other without ever blurring the salient features of their flaws. This is the description of Oran’s light by Albert Camus that can inspire the lighting of the faces as a caress on the skin. These are the characters of Witold Gombrowicz’s novels and plays, whose entire density is built on the ambivalence of their relationships with the other. Painting the light that comes from the bodies is to seek it in the abysses of the soul, through encounter and otherness. Figurative representation in the work of Kornel Zezula is not a representation but a meaningful narrative whose evocative power lies in the sensuality of the artistic gesture, bodily and tactile, unfolding as a choreography of lines and colors of the gravitation of emotions. Although Kornel Zezula’s portraits capture a fleeting expression, it is not a truth but a question, a fragment of being in the moment that contains the entire vertigo of the past and the possible future.
Discovering his new exhibition.
A brilliant and erudite aesthete, Kornel Zezula is now among the permanent artists of Hatchikian Gallery with a work that summons us to disturbing confrontations: it is always our self-portrait that reveals itself in contrast to the intimate aspects of the other that the artist reveals, and we are eager to see the work of this promising young talent unfold in a singularity that is already well established.
Discover Kornel Zezula through the exhibition we are dedicating to him starting May 7th in our Art Loft, a place both intimate and luminous that will enhance the works in a space where we will be pleased to warmly welcome you by appointment. Because beyond the discovery of an artist’s work, art connects us and it is always with joy that we will exchange with you, for a moment of sharing our artistic emotions.
Hatchikian presents Kornel Zezula, Art Loft 4 rue du Dr Blanche, Paris 16th,
by appointment starting May 7, 2021.
