"Presença” - Solo Exhibition at the Brazilian Consulate in New York City.

The Poetics of Presença by David Ebony

People are protagonists in the intimate scenes that artist Helena Kozuchowicz features in her most recent series of vibrant paintings and drawings, Presença (Presence). Yet they are not heroic personages; nor are they abject or tragic subjects. The anonymous figures seem archetypal and sometimes familiar, but the compositions are not portraits in any conventional sense. Instead, Kozuchowicz focuses on everyday activities in which a figure or pairs of figures interact with each other, and with the space around them, in ways that typically go unnoticed by most of us.

In each work, the Brazilian-born artist invites the viewer to slow down, to observe the subtle nuances of body language and human interaction. She thereby proposes in each composition a quiet narrative in which ordinary actions can convey extraordinary meaning. In her artworks, the prosaic yields to something poetic, and the personal becomes universal. With a background in architecture, Kozuchowicz has a special sensitivity to constructed space and spatial relationships. She examines how figures occupy a range of domestic and public architectural environments—from the rarified surroundings of the artist’s studio, or a familial dining room, to the cramped quarters of a subway car. The architectonic forms, however, are simply implied rather than described.

The sinuous charcoal lines and bravura brushstrokes of oil color throughout the recent works demonstrate a technical facility that is full of energy and elegance. A Escada (The Ladder), with a lone figure and a striking orange diagonal, and O metro é um filme feito (A subway scene as if in a film), with the disengaged yet intense interaction of two passengers, are particularly graceful compositions. At times, the works recall the expressive visual vocabulary of artists such as Egon Schiele and Alberto Giacometti, who have inspired her. Other Kozuchowicz works in Presença, such as Siesta and She’s Calling You, suggest psychological studies of complex relationships and interactions. The implied narratives and the level of emotional impact that each image conveys depend solely on the imagination of the viewer. •         

Writer and curator David Ebony is a contributing editor of Art in America  and Yale University Press. The author of numerous artist monographs, he is also a senior editor at SNAP Editions NYC, and an adjunct professor of art history and theory at the New York Academy of Art. Text ©David Ebony 2024