Kiaf Seoul

Andrea Festa is pleased to announce its participation in Kiaf SEOUL 2024, presenting new works by Sinéad Breslin (1986, Ireland), an artist whose practice navigates between the poetic and the metaphysical. Breslin lives and works between America and Ireland, and holds both an M.A. and B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of the West of England. Her career has been shaped by multiple international residencies across Europe and exhibitions spanning the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, and Mexico. Her works are held in private and museum collections worldwide, including the Alex Katz Foundation and The San Antonio Museum of Art.

 

In Breslin’s paintings, the regularity of a motif fractures into a pretext—becoming a plane for the eruption of warm, gestural brushwork that resists any rigid formalism. Figures, often solitary, are suspended in flattened perspectives and exaggerated colour fields, evoking the strange elasticity of REM sleep. They hover between portraiture and landscape, between memory and invention. The viewing experience recalls leafing through an old photo album populated by unrecognisable yet strangely familiar presences—images that hold an unknown intimacy, yet feel urgently alive.

“I try to create contemplative spaces that act as both a mirror and a window,” Breslin notes. “The figure serves as an anchor to explore ideas of metaphysics. My aim is to create tension, intensity, and relief through the materiality of oil painting.” Her subjects, drawn from a wide range of cultures and geographies, form a 21st-century travelogue—one that traces her life and encounters across the globe.