'Watch out! There's always someone watching!' 2019

Editor: Alfred Freddy Krupa’s 2019 oil painting, "'Watch out! There's always someone watching!'" immediately makes me feel uneasy. The heavy use of black and the fragmented image create a sense of paranoia. What do you make of it? Curator: Uneasy is a good word. It feels like a visual scream muffled by velvet, doesn't it? Krupa plays with the gaze, both the subject's and our own. That one visible eye—it’s a piercing detail amid all that abstraction. The neo-expressionist influence is clear, but I find it deeply unsettling. Editor: The title adds another layer. Is Krupa commenting on surveillance culture, or something more personal? Curator: I think it's both, potentially. The best art usually functions on multiple levels. The abstract strokes can become a net or prison bars. Do you think the artist wants us to be voyeurs, implicated in this watching? Editor: That’s a fascinating question. Maybe by showing so little, Krupa forces us to actively construct the image and thus, to become the watcher. It's not passive. Curator: Precisely! Art becomes an unsettling mirror, reflecting our own anxieties back at us. A bold artistic choice indeed. Editor: It makes me think about the line between observation and invasion, and how fragile that line is. Curator: And that fragility, I suspect, is exactly what Krupa intended. The experience of looking and *being* looked at, as a point of vulnerability. So powerful.