Untitled Art Houston

ABC-ARTE proposes "Painting Itself", a two-person presentation bringing into dialogue the work of Brazilian painter Antonio Kuschnir (b. 2001) and Austrian-Italian artist Jorrit Tornquist (1938-2023). Though belonging to different generations and artistic traditions, both artists share a deep interest in perception and in how images structure our experience of the world.

Antonio Kuschnir’s recent paintings explore what might be described as an uncertain Arcadia: landscapes that echo the European pastoral tradition while subtly destabilizing it. His scenes are populated by resting figures, wandering characters, and symbolic presences within lush environments that initially appear idyllic. Yet beneath this calm surface lies a latent tension—dragons emerge from foliage, serpents move quietly through the landscape, and moments of stillness gradually give way to transformation or conflict. Kuschnir’s paintings unfold like fragments of an open narrative, where storytelling coexists with richly patterned surfaces that often push the image toward ornament and abstraction.

Placed in dialogue with these works are paintings and chromatic studies by Jorrit Tornquist, a pioneering figure in European color theory whose practice has, since the 1960s, investigated the perceptual and spatial dynamics of color. Tornquist’s works reduce painting to the interaction of hue, light, and optical perception, creating subtle chromatic environments where minimal shifts in color generate powerful spatial and atmospheric effects.

Presented together, Kuschnir and Tornquist offer two distinct yet complementary approaches to painting: one grounded in myth, narrative, and symbolic imagery, the other in the scientific and phenomenological study of color. Their dialogue highlights how both figuration and abstraction can operate as tools to question how we see, perceive, and construct visual reality.