About the Event

Attila Konnyu occupies a vital position within the evolving narrative of international color abstraction. For over four decades, his practice has constituted a sustained inquiry into the metaphysical and emotional potential of color and form.

Meditation, the present exhibition, assembles a significant body of work in which Konnyu explores the phenomenology of perception alongside the spiritual dimensions of artistic expression. Through a distinct and deeply personal visual language, he constructs compositions that are simultaneously materially grounded and conceptually transcendent, inviting viewers into spaces of contemplative engagement.

Within his chromatic vocabulary, we observe gestures that shift and coalesce to create three-dimensional impressions, evoking relief and sculptural presence - an essential facet of his practice. Red and blue dominate his palette, functioning almost as emblematic signatures of his abstract idiom. One might even categorize his output into two tonal families: the "reds" and the "blues."

In the red-toned works, Konnyu deploys radiant crimson to convey an overwhelming intensity - an illusion of spiritual fervor, as though the lifeblood of creative passion were erupting from within. There is an invisible force at work here, one that stirs the viewer with quiet urgency. Often, these compositions are charged with a dynamic interplay between red and black, the latter drifting like smoke and introducing an element of mystery and tension into the field of color.

Konnyu has remarked, “Anyone who wants to see the light must risk the darkness.” His blue-toned works are profound, romantic, and immersive. Occasional bursts of orange and yellow shimmer like distant starlight across a nocturnal sea. The black forms within these paintings extend endlessly, as if tunneling into the viewer’s nervous system - alive, sensitive, and richly evocative. These canvases encourage boundless reverie and reflect Konnyu’s singular perception of the world.

If we are to position his practice within an art historical framework, Konnyu belongs to the tradition of lyrical abstraction. His work expresses life with exquisite sensitivity, fusing body, mind, and spirit into a dreamlike unity. His exploration of love - quiet, intense, and deeply felt - is rendered through an artistic perspective that is both gentle and assured.

His paintings are alive with movement, awakening something dormant within us - an ache long forgotten, as if stitching closed the intangible wounds of memory. Konnyu’s approach aligns with gestural abstraction, privileging personal emotion and spiritual resonance over representational fidelity, and embracing a profoundly subjective ethos. His paintings serve as bridges between the eye and the heart.

As the artist states: “My works are visual expressions of emotional energy - manifestations of several inherent microcosmic interactions within the macro-universe.” The meaning of his work is not fixed, but instead opens itself to individual interpretation, allowing each viewer to embark on a personal journey of discovery.

Philosophically, Konnyu’s abstraction draws upon existentialist thought and resonates with phenomenological inquiry. The existential proposition that existence precedes essence affirms the uniqueness of the individual - an idea that remains central, if elusive. His paintings abstract reality not through reproduction, but through experiential intensity, translating lived moments into visual form.

The diversity of Konnyu’s practice reveals the inexhaustible vitality of his creative energy. As a multidisciplinary artist, his explorations across painting, sculpture, and installation art form a cohesive, spiritually driven whole.

This exhibition not only offers a profound engagement with his abstract use of color in painting, but also presents his sculptural works - extensions of the same spiritual inquiry.

In the quiet of the darkened gallery, viewers are invited to sit, reflect, and fully encounter the emotional currents of his work: the spiritual struggle, the quiet ecstasy, and the sublime potential of art to move us beyond the surface of things.

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Wang Jumeng
Art Historian, Chief Curator, Director
Yuelai Art Museum