Inside the Exhibition Painting Endurance With the Female Form

L'Appartement Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland, is presenting a solo exhibition by London-based artist Konstantina Krikzoni titled ARMATURA, accompanied by essays from writer Jennifer Higgie and artist Nigel Cooke. This is femininity, power and confrontation on canvas.

A deeply personal project for Krikzoni, she pushed the limits of her painting technique and her emotional endurance during a solitary experience in her studio. The artist returned to the female body as a site of intersection between figuration and abstraction, with paintings that both reveal and conceal. In the artworks, the body becomes fluid and almost fractured through layers of paint disrupted by unexpected lines. Here, lines do not define, but they dissolve to create a poetic and emotional tension.

There is nothing passive about the female figures depicted in these paintings, and they are not performing. The subjects are confrontational, meeting your gaze head-on with a quiet confidence. The scenes recall funerary compositions from Rubens, taking bodies rendered in greys and yellows, suspended between flesh and its shadow. The works look at endings in a direct manner without an urge to escape, but more to understand.

Krikzoni explains that the title of the exhibition is "a word drawn from the metal framework that supports sculptures, but also a metaphor for something deeper: an inner structure that holds us upright when everything feels like it's falling apart. An armatura built from the inside out, a process of fortification, endurance and survival. These works emerged from a vital need to continue, to process, to transform emotion into form."

The exhibition is on view from January 22 to April 30 in Geneva. Head to the gallery's website for more information.

In other news, check out the all-female exhibition exploring feminine intuition in London.

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