Artist statement
Adrian Kiss’ art practice has been rooted in an intuitive relationship with materials, treating them as a safe
space and forming the foundation of his artistic language. This familiar space has always invited him to
explore broader, more complex dynamics—a horizon he’s only recently had the courage to cross. In his
earlier work, Kiss struggled to translate his positionality and material intuition into larger narratives, often
compelling him to imagine himself burying his works for transformation: curing and aging. He began to
use this approach as a guiding methodology, to understand the performativity of materials, and the
transformative potential of forces, thus he began investigating how the non-living can act as a performer,
embodying time-based processes, under and beyond the influence of the human.
Bio
Adrian Kiss (b. 1990, Miercurea-Ciuc, RO) is an artist working between Rotterdam and Budapest. He
holds an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2025) and a BA from Central Saint Martins,
London. His large-scale textile-based installations have garnered international attention, including
inclusion in Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art (Phaidon, 2019).
He was awarded the Derkovits Scholarship (2021, 2022), nominated for the Leopold Bloom Art Award
(2025), shortlisted four times for the Esterházy Art Award, and preselected for the STRABAG Art Award
in 2021. Recent residencies include the Advanced Textile Program at the TextielMuseum, Tilburg (2025),
the Fleur Groenendijk Residency at Brutus, Rotterdam (2025), and Art in General, New York (2018).
His work has been exhibited across Europe and the US, including solo shows at VUNU Gallery (Košice,
2023), FUTURA (Prague, 2017), and Trafó Gallery (Budapest, 2015). Group exhibitions include BOZAR
(Brussels), Bunkier Sztuki (Krakow), Ludwig Museum (Budapest), Künstlerhaus (Graz), Centre d’art
Neuchâtel, the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (Tallinn), and the Hungarian National Gallery
(Budapest, 2025). In 2025, he presented a duo exhibition Restless Dislocations at the Ján Koniarek
Gallery (Trnava, SK) and received commissions from ATiiSSU, Seoul.
Short Work Description
This textile work is constructed from nine second-hand leather jackets. Each jacket was carefully taken
apart stitch by stitch, allowing for a slow, material engagement with the traces of previous use. The
process reveals a shared history between the garment and the body it once protected and accompanied.
Inside the linings, remnants were found—dust, dirt, and small forgotten objects—while the leather
surfaces carry visible wear. The material bears the marks of time, registering use, pressure, and aging.
The disassembled leather is reconfigured into a large-scale soft sculpture. Its form loosely recalls utilitarian
objects found in agricultural environments, suggesting functions of storage, support, or containment.
The patterning of the work is informed by close-up studies of clothing and fragments of the human body.
These details are enlarged and translated into new constructions, using leather that once functioned as a
second skin for others. Through this transformation, the work operates as a body in itself, a continuation
and rearticulation of accumulated histories.
Price: € 13500
