The nine oil paintings in Counterpoint inhabit the edge of artist Antone Konst’s practice, demonstrating different approaches to the subjects that have occupied his pictorial exploration and personal iconography . Resonating with an observational sensitivity to the natural world, they are at once firmly grounded in the figure repesentend, yet untethered to the thing intself. There is playfulnness and subtle jubliance, but it is the native and nuanced sort - the kind found, inexplicably, in nature itself.
There is curiousity and serene confidence behind the work, which emanates through Konst’s accepatance of unplanned elements to intrude. Like volunteer saplings, at first met with skepticism if not consternation, they are kept, modifed, pruned - until they become welcomed features of the paintings and integral to thieir emotive success. Black dots on the face of an azure woman, or blue ones on the branches of a plum tree; a refraction of a daffodil petal.
In Konst’s hands, line, form, color, and value emerge and recede to create paintings of graphic and emotional complexity and texture. One element rises impercebtibly to the forefront as another dips, like voices in a fugue, pulsating with kaleidoscopic timbres and sub-rhythms. The paintings delight on their face, to be sure, but offer their greatest reward in the swirling, undulating, tapestried depths and contrapuntal harmonies that continually renew themselves beneath the surface.
- Elliot Richman
Antone Könst (b.1987) has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad, including solo exhibitions at Tilton Gallery, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY; Each Modern, Taipei; Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles; the Fondation des Etats Unis, in Paris; and public art commissions from The Lighthouse Works, NY, and Socrates Sculpture Park, NY. A recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Grant as well as the Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship, he received his BFA from CalArts and his MFA from Yale University School of Art. Könst lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
There is curiousity and serene confidence behind the work, which emanates through Konst’s accepatance of unplanned elements to intrude. Like volunteer saplings, at first met with skepticism if not consternation, they are kept, modifed, pruned - until they become welcomed features of the paintings and integral to thieir emotive success. Black dots on the face of an azure woman, or blue ones on the branches of a plum tree; a refraction of a daffodil petal.
In Konst’s hands, line, form, color, and value emerge and recede to create paintings of graphic and emotional complexity and texture. One element rises impercebtibly to the forefront as another dips, like voices in a fugue, pulsating with kaleidoscopic timbres and sub-rhythms. The paintings delight on their face, to be sure, but offer their greatest reward in the swirling, undulating, tapestried depths and contrapuntal harmonies that continually renew themselves beneath the surface.
- Elliot Richman
Antone Könst (b.1987) has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad, including solo exhibitions at Tilton Gallery, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY; Each Modern, Taipei; Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles; the Fondation des Etats Unis, in Paris; and public art commissions from The Lighthouse Works, NY, and Socrates Sculpture Park, NY. A recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Grant as well as the Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship, he received his BFA from CalArts and his MFA from Yale University School of Art. Könst lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Counterpoint
June 6 – July 18, 2026