Alina Kunitsyna, 11 x Without You, 2020
, Ink on paper, 40 x 40 cm
Kollitsch Collection

Alina Kunitsyna, II, 2020–2022
, Oil on canvas, 220 x 140 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Coverings, drapes and folds are a central theme in Alina Kunitsyna’s oeuvre. With powerful aesthetic effects, she turns everyday items into objects of elegant beauty, using light, space, and colour. Richness of detail and decorative drapery let the weight and density of a load of laundry melt into the background and blur the borders between space and reality. The eye seems to behold an animate creature that rises above the heaviness of earthly existence, radiantly and gracefully.

— Magdalena Koschat 

Alina Kunitsyna, Nach Omphala [After Omphala], 2014
, Lithography, Edition 11/33, 48 x 64,5 cm
Kollitsch Collection

Ever since 2006, we have been encountering fabric constructs in Alina Kunitsyna’s paintings; constructs that apparently – if not obviously – contain human figures, in a crouching, seated or embryonal position. On a formal level, these figures appear to constitute a closed system with their covering. The interior – the invisible figure – articulates itself via its shell, and not just as a shape: The artist endows the shell with a number of visible expressive qualities that grant us access to what is inside. The specific combinations of fabric folds, colours, patterns and ornaments tell us something about the presence that is hidden inside and that is only hinted at; about its emotional state, its world of emotions, its “essence”.

– Lucas Gehrmann

Alina Kunitsyna, Hyperkugel [Hyper sphere], 2015
, Ink on paper, 130 x 130 cm
Kollitsch Collection

Exceptional hills expand the original landscape of spheres, creating a four-dimensional hyper space where an unlimited existence seems possible. The characteristic light colours of the hyper spheres link in with the colour palette of Maria Lassnig’s physical sensation colours which develop within the sphere with lots of light.

— Magdalena Koschat