Agata Kus (b. 1987), Fang, 2021

Provenance
Wroclaw, private collection purchased from the artist

Looking at Agata Kus' paintings, we enter her everyday life - a world of young intelligentsia, artists and students, full of social gatherings and long nights. The backdrop for these stories becomes, among others, Krakow's bars, concerts and house parties. Like a keen observer, the artist painterly processes and documents the scenes she sees, creating a kind of social chronicle. "I imagine Agata standing in the middle of the harmony that surrounds her in pubs or concerts. This harmony, pre-distilled by sensitivity, lands later in the paintings," the curator, Magdalena Ujma, wrote about Kus' work (Ujma M., Outside the Picture Frame, [in:] catalog of the exhibition Agata Kus First Time / First Time, Radom 2024, p. 27). The painter's compositions become a frozen freeze-frame, an immortalized memory forever.
This type of work includes the presented "Fang" from 2021, showing the crowded space of a pub. Behind the bar with a row of taps stands a laughing company presenting a glass with a juicy green plant. Some girls sitting nearby at the bar are busy commenting on what they are watching on their smartphones. Everyone is shrouded in artificial red light, giving the scene a slightly unreal feel. The moment frozen in the image seems to glow as if from within - the glow of a party evening, and the figures and objects painted without much detail, blur like a specter of memory.