Estopia Gallery, Corso Elvezia 3, 6900 Lugano
Free
With Between Outside and Inside II / Tra fuori e dentro II, Estopia Art Gallery presents the second chapter of the exhibition project dedicated to Rostia Kunovsky (born in 1954 in Gottwaldov-Zlín,
His canvases are populated by anonymous façades, mute windows, and inverted letters. Fragments of architecture and language intersect, overlap, and collide. The English writer and art critic John Berger once observed: “Perhaps many of the buildings with their empty windows are only shells: are they ruins or construction sites? Or are they both alternately?” It is precisely within this in-between — between construction and erasure, between word and silence — that Kunovsky’s work is situated. The title Between Outside and Inside once again underscores this threshold position, where his painting draws its force: never fully inside, never entirely outside, but always within the passage that connects one to the other.
What distinguishes Kunovsky’s work is his ability to compose dense canvases, built up through multiple layers where signs, letters, and façades accumulate. If these compositions initially appear chaotic and eclectic, they nonetheless reveal an internal balance, as though harmony were emerging from turmoil. In this second chapter, that balance gains duration: the threshold is no longer a moment of passage, but a condition that persists over time. Kunovsky’s painting thus reflects our experience of a saturated world, where fragments and contradictions coexist and gradually sketch a fragile yet tangible coherence.
Between Outside and Inside II marks a further stage in the development of Kunovsky’s practice. For the artist, it represents a deepening of a pictorial language rooted in ambiguity and stratification; for Estopia, it confirms a long-term commitment to accompanying and giving visibility to a body of work that, despite the early attention it received from Berger, remains understated in its full critical and poetic significance.
Notes
- Opening 05.02.2026 at 6 p.m.
Free
What distinguishes Kunovsky’s work is his ability to compose dense canvases, built up through multiple layers where signs, letters, and façades accumulate. If these compositions initially appear chaotic and eclectic, they nonetheless reveal an internal balance, as though harmony were emerging from turmoil. In this second chapter, that balance gains duration: the threshold is no longer a moment of passage, but a condition that persists over time. Kunovsky’s painting thus reflects our experience of a saturated world, where fragments and contradictions coexist and gradually sketch a fragile yet tangible coherence.
Between Outside and Inside II marks a further stage in the development of Kunovsky’s practice. For the artist, it represents a deepening of a pictorial language rooted in ambiguity and stratification; for Estopia, it confirms a long-term commitment to accompanying and giving visibility to a body of work that, despite the early attention it received from Berger, remains understated in its full critical and poetic significance.
Notes
- Opening 05.02.2026 at 6 p.m.
Free