Artists

Henry Curchod

Press release

The Intermission present Lotteria, the first solo exhibition of Henry Curchod in Piraeus. In Lotteria, Henry Curchod constructs a fictional yet plausible world where painting, food, and fantasy merge into a single imagined restaurant. In his Hackney Wick studio, a chef's jacket embroidered with the Lotteria emblem hangs above a vast silver canvas, pointing to a place that could exist but doesn't. The project unfolds as a suspended vision of hospitality and consumption, shaped by culinary memory and desire, where painting becomes a space to rehearse this invented world. Across the works, everyday objects—onions, fish, knives, chopping boards—shift between still life and character, forming a visual language that is playful, unstable, and alive with narrative potential. Henry Curchod's work presents a world synthesised from diverse references, drawing on a Western upbringing and Iranian heritage as the foundation for an inquiry into the prevailing human condition. Born in 1992, the artist has cultivated an approach that oscillates between figuration and abstraction through a playful confluence of drawing and painting. Curchod primarily uses oil sticks to interrogate the value of various surfaces—including linen, rugs, and stainless steel— reflecting a commitment to an iteratively expanding material universe. In Curchod's world, the self is explored as a composite, at once singular and multiple, navigating an interior landscape of increasing complexity. The formal result is a trenchant contraposition of chromatic density and raw, gestural markings. His compositions, characterised by unanchored forms and perspectival shifts, capture momentary alignments of emotion and reflection. Figures appear to assemble in real time from scattered fragments of thought and memory, reflecting a state of flux where the density of a form is determined by narrative weight as much as material mass. An instinctive artist, Curchod treats the surface as a space for unpacking the self, allowing meaning to reveal itself through the investigative act of painting.