A happy coincidence
In a house beside the sea in Ormoc, Leyte, a massive glass artwork is installed. The work, a composition of layered glass that plays with light and transparency, is by Hungarian artist Zoltán Krizsán. What he doesn’t know yet is that within a month, he will begin collaborating with the homeowner, Gina Tan, a collector and museum fundraiser, and that she will go on to manage his career.
Nor could he have anticipated how deeply his trip to the Philippines would influence the work that followed, leading to exhibitions in Tokyo, Budapest, and Paris within a year.
And Manila is next on the list.
A chance encounter in Budapest
Some things happen purely by chance. By luck. This collaboration began in Budapest, where Tan lived for eight years before moving to Paris. Through a mutual friend, she was introduced to Krizsán, whose work was in a local group show.
“I saw a piece that resonated with me because it reminded me of William Blake, who I love. There was a huge William Blake exhibition that I had just seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Zoltán told me that he wasn’t thinking of Blake when he painted it, but that Blake had been a strong influence in his life. So that’s what drew me to the piece, which I bought,” Tan recalls.
Soon, she learned that Krizsán—who playfully describes his work as “Space Baroque”—was not only a painter but also an architectural artist and a master of glass. For about a decade, it was his main business: He worked with the Hungarian Ministry of Finance on the design of a historic building, and also with architects on works in Slovakia and Budapest.
Since 2004, he has been working on refining a process inspired by traditional oil painting but adapted for glass. “It’s a very delicate process. I use printers, cutters, and original paintings to do the layering on the mirrors, adjusted to the translucency of the glass. It’s my own way of doing it for 20 years. I patented it in 2012,” he shares.
After learning more about his body of work, an idea started to form: “I was in the middle of building my house in Ormoc and wanted to come up with something original. I loved his glass artwork and had the crazy idea to ask him to do that, but on a massive scale,” Tan shares.
As she can be very convincing, he said yes.
Stepping foot in the Philippines
Krizsán found himself on the way to the Philippines two months later, but pulling it off wasn’t easy. Tan commissioned two works—one in glass and one in mirrored glass—and gave him two months to create the work and travel with them.
Krizsán then divided both into hundreds of small pieces to carry to the Philippines as checked luggage, and then reassembled them in Ormoc into two large glass murals.
The project brought back his past work with architects. “It’s important for the artwork to be part of the building or the home, not as something you simply hang on the wall,” he says.
Before this trip, Krizsán had never set foot in the country. He was deeply moved by the way Filipinos expressed themselves, from the way they freely spoke to each other down to their gestures. “People were so open-hearted, so authentic; I was coming from a place where you always have to filter yourself,” he explains.
Another thing that inspired him was the landscape, which showed up in his work in the following months. “The colors—even the light there are different. In the Philippines, you have different vocabularies for light and color.”
From fundraiser to manager
At 60, Tan had been thinking about retirement. “My family, who have never really paid that much attention to my art collection, were so fascinated by this new glass work,” she says. “So I thought, I could do something. Managing artists had been on my mind, but after retirement—why not do it now?”
“I told him, ‘I’ll manage your career.’ It just came out of a conversation.” It was a natural next step after 20 years as a museum consultant—running membership and fundraising campaigns for museums in the United States, Canada, Australia, and France.
“I’ve spent my entire adult life surrounded by art, but never directly involved in the art,” she says. Now, as Krizsán’s manager, she is thrilled about being more hands-on.
Soon, they created KRZN Studio—bringing on studio coordinator Rudy Izaguirre Cruz to handle operations and manage exhibitions.
Carrying Ormoc to Tokyo, Paris, and beyond
The Philippines left its mark on Krizsán’s work; his abstract paintings were now tinged with more color, their layered compositions taking on an expressive, almost otherworldly quality. People have commented that the swirls and fragmented shapes created visuals that hover between abstraction and recognizable forms. Animals? Waves, perhaps?
Following the partnership in the Philippines, the next stop was Tokyo, and the first project they took on there was “Tokyo 10”—10 paintings in 10 days. “The Tokyo 10 paintings were created in Tokyo, but they were really conceived in the Philippines. The colors come from the Philippines,” Tan shares.
Later, Krizsán’s mother told Tan that she had brought him back to life, because the colors in his work had returned. The work was first featured at The Harmonyst in Tokyo, followed by exhibitions at Boadicée and Asia Now in Paris during Art Week.
In December, Krizsán and Tan will present his work at Doxa Gallery in Budapest. An exhibition in the Philippines is also in the works for spring 2027.
For Krizsán, returning to the Philippines is about more than exhibiting his work. Having found a connection there, he hopes to give something back to the country that has given him so much. “I like the people in the Philippines and I’d really like to work with them somehow, maybe through social projects. The country and the people are so honest,” he shares.
Tan, meanwhile, highlights their collaboration as a fortunate meeting of circumstances. “How lucky that we are able to do this,” she says. “I guess a lot of it is about good timing.”
