Emilia Kina
Untitled - @ Warsaw Old Town
Untitled - @ Warsaw Old Town
BIO
A painter and photographer, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Her oeuvre explores the relationship between the painting as an image and the painting as an object. It evokes associations with screens, curtains, and motionless drapes that obscure our view. The Renaissance metaphor of the painting as a window, suggested by Leon Alberti, takes on an intriguing contemporary quality in her works. The figure of the window is treated literally, and its material frame becomes part of the set, more symbolic than realistic. The artist’s compositions also reveal a fascination with nineteenth-century studio photography, in which painted landscapes and curtains formed the backdrop for a portrait.
Artwork
Untitled, oil on formed canvas, 2024
The painting by Emilia Kina combines illusion and abstraction in her inimitable way. Her unique strategy for shaping the surface makes the work both a painted image and a three-dimensional object. Kina is inspired by the ambiguous motif of the curtain, a fabric that obscures the view. This picture on canvas serves as a curtain of sorts with stage lights shining on it, as if awaiting the start of a performance. This theatrical allusion also refers to the location of the PURO Warsaw Old Town hotel near the Opera and the National Theater.