Krisztián Tejfel
Krisztián Tejfel grew up between two very different worlds. As a child he spent long stretches with his grandparents in the Hungarian countryside, and back in town he was into skateboarding and hip-hop in the fast-changing Hungary of the 1990s. Born in Zalaegerszeg, he never went to art school.
He started out with graffiti and airbrush, then moved on to photography and film. In the 2010s he painted almost only on a screen for about six years. Videos of him making his digital portraits of women, melancholic and deliberately unfinished, reached millions of views, and Wacom made him an official ambassador. Juxtapoz, Elle France and The Huffington Post wrote about the work.
Tejfel then went back to canvas, and since 2018 his paintings have been abstract. He works in translucent layers and keeps reworking the image, painting over parts of it and building it up again. That way of working comes from his digital years.
His paintings deal with the gap between the slow pace he knew in the countryside and the speed of life today. He is also interested in boredom, which he sees as a time when attention is still free. His work has been shown in Paris, Sydney, Melbourne and Philadelphia.
