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Kulturális értéket közvetítünk

Gyűjtemény

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János FAJÓ
Swing-Swung

János FAJÓ

Swing-Swung

Year(s)
2006
Technique
chrome-steel
Size
32x42x26 cm
Artist's introduction

János Fajó is one of the leading figures of Hungarian Constructive Geometric art. During his decades-long career, he researched empirical and geometric phenomena with a unique rigour. In his work, he investigated repetitive structures and their complex variations. His experiments in form spanned different media, including graphic work, screenprints, paintings, wall objects and sculptures. The easily recognisable, orderly visual universe of his works points to the inexhaustible nature of colour and form, relying on the purest pictorial attitude. He created symmetry, asymmetry, infinite variation of movement, rhythm, and dynamic relations by organising simple planar shapes. János Fajó graduated from the Hungarian College of Applied Arts in 1961. In 1971, he founded the renowned Neo-Avant-Garde group, the Pest Workshop, which printed multipliable graphics to democratise art. In addition to his publishing activities, he ran a free school for decades and organised exhibitions as the director of the Józsefváros Gallery. He received the Munkácsy Prize in 1985 and the Kossuth Prize in 2008. He has been teaching at the Hungarian University of Applied Arts since 1989. In 2016, he was elected as a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts. His works can be seen in significant local and international museum collections such as the Ludwig Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Albertina in Vienna, the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum in Graz, Haus Konstruktiv (The Foundation for Constructive and Concrete Art) in Zurich and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, as well as important national and international private collections. Zita Sárvári

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Gergő SZINYOVA
Untitled (Living in Europe)

Gergő SZINYOVA

Untitled (Living in Europe)

Year(s)
2019
Technique
acrylic on canvas
Size
150x100 cm
Artist's introduction

Gergő Szinyova's artistic practice is connected in many ways to new tendencies in contemporary abstraction. His paintings usually form independent series that attempt to examine and reinterpret the historical and current paradigms of the medium. Furthermore, as an artist of the Tumblr generation, the 21st-century digital image culture's visual impulses feed into his paintings. By remixing various visual codes, Szinyova draws attention to the endless flow of imagery. The extremely thin, print-like surfaces of the paintings echo the aesthetic qualities of the risograph technique, which is similar to screen-printing and is currently experiencing a renaissance. To evoke and render risograph prints, the artist has developed a technique that allows each of the painted – yet print-like – image surfaces to function as a unique, unrepeatable and non-reproducible entity, even though the repetition of the digitally pre-drafted, vector-based motifs points towards the opportunities inherent to industry-level mechanical reproduction. Apart from the aesthetics of risograph prints, the Hungarian and European examples of Poster art originating from the 1970s and the 1980s are an essential reference for Szinyova. In addition to evoking the aesthetic qualities of reproduction, the artist seeks to avoid the presence of narrative and direct meaning. Mónika Zsikla

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1436 Benkč Barnab†s - S†vok, szĀrke alapon neon cs°kok
Barnabás BENKŐ
Stripes, neon lines on grey basis

Barnabás BENKŐ

Stripes, neon lines on grey basis

Year(s)
2021
Technique
acril, spray, canvas
Size
150x110 cm
Artist's introduction

Barnabás Benkő graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2021, majoring in painting, his teacher was Maria Chilf. A year later, his debut exhibition at the Barabás Villa attracted great interest, and since then he has been a featured artist at Resident Art. The compositional principle of his paintings is based on a multi-layered buffer zone: he divides the picture surfaces with parallel lines applied horizontally or vertically, and covers the stripes with competing layers. In his paintings, he mixes the seemingly impersonal covering-up, the partial "erasure" of previous elements of the picture, with a partisan appropriation of the self, an expressive gesture of overwriting – all of which can appear as a wild brushstroke applied with a new colour code, a sprayed graffiti tag, or a collage of masking tape peeled from previous paintings. The result is a dynamic complex of images where, despite the gaps, the perception and illusion of the depths of several works of art flashes simultaneously. It is as if Benkő is performing an imaginative re- and deconstruction of urban space by organizing – within a given image – into an archaeological archive the view of the cavalcade of colours of the outside world reflected in camera obscura by the aluminium blinds on the room's ceilings, the traces of writing on the metal shutters of shop windows, and the erroneous information of the virtual flood of images. Lines, burgundy no.1 (2022) and Lines in blue no.1. are the best expressions of the kind of double-directional dynamism that explodes in tense harmony, giving the impression of a hologram and compelling the viewer to move vertically up and down. It is as if this was a glimpse underneath another layer of images in the paintings, or an advertising billboard that shows 3 different images alternating in a short period of time, and the work has just caught the point of transition. The striking gestures “[...] open the range of interpretation to the dimension of time along with space”, wrote art historian János Schneller. However, both in the collection and in the practice of Barnabás Benkő, the Lines on blue base (2021) bring an exciting exception, a new pole, which, by mastering the essence of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and colour field painting, allows us into the deep layers of lyrical tone. Annamária Szabó

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Attila CSÁJI
Sign Grid SB II.

Attila CSÁJI

Sign Grid SB II.

Year(s)
1969
Technique
mixed media on fibreboard
Size
75x70 cm
Artist's introduction

Attila Csáji was a prominent figure in the Neo-Avant-Garde art scene of the mid-1960s, one of the most important organisers of his generation, and a pioneer of Hungarian gesture painting and light art. Attila Csáji's inner essence, the symbolism of light, which permeates his "self-principled", multifaceted art, was summed up by Lóránd Hegyi: "For Attila Csáji, light is the phenomena that illuminates the "hidden face of nature". Light reveals the invisible, hidden, essential characteristics, uniting the intellectual and the organic world. In other words, light becomes a mystical force in his artistic world, capable of fusing the infinite cosmos and the infinite realm of the human spirit. " Born in Szepsi in Upper Hungary, Csáji, who moved to Budapest with his family as a child, graduated from the Teacher Training College in Eger in 1964. His works, referred to as "szürenon", created at the beginning of his painting career, combined surrealism and non-figurativity. In his mature oil paintings, calligraphic 'writing marks' and Informel figures, which bulged out plastically, were lined up on the surface as fictitious messages of archaic cultures. According to the artist's interpretation, "The Message Grids are plastic gestural structures, a pantomime or dance of the hand, transformed by light, messages that carry the spell of ancient cultures in the present, at the border between chaos and order." For a while, the ever-growing series of greyish-brown, metallically shimmering 'sign grids' was enriched with applied objects wrapped in black before returning to the sculptural paint mass. In the late sixties and early seventies, Csáji participated as a conceptual artist and active organiser in important events of the Neo-Avant-Garde scene (Szürenon Group, the Kápolna exhibitions in Balatonboglár, etc.). From the mid-seventies onwards, he began to work with various light technologies in the field of fine art, moving beyond the surrealistic relief effect, creating holographic works and laser installations. Driven by the thirst for scientific knowledge, in the 1980s, he studied laser technology at the Central Institute of Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, then reflection holography at the BME, and then transmission holography at the legendary MIT in the USA. Since the 1980s, his photographic work has been featured in important international exhibitions. His works are in several museums abroad, from Seoul to Cambridge. He has received numerous awards, including the Munkácsy Prize, and is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts and has patented a range of ideas. He lives and works in Budapest. Gábor Rieder

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Andrea TIVADAR
Industrial landscape II.

Andrea TIVADAR

Industrial landscape II.

Year(s)
2019
Technique
oil, glue on canvas
Size
120 x 100 cm
Artist's introduction

Andrea Tivadar is a representative of the young, abstract generation of the internationally renowned Cluj-Napoca scene of the 2010s. In her colourful, “tubist” canvases, she rearranges the forms of modernism with energetic combinations of broad gestures and cylindrical tubular shapes. Andrea Tivadar, born in Satu Mare, Romania, graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in the mid-2010s. Her early maturing painting is a sensual, colouristic surface treatment, rather than an ironic reabstraction. Her paintings show brightly coloured tube shapes, plastically modelled against a neutral background, smeared with broad gestures. These motifs first coiled like wires in an industrial atmosphere, then fell apart into smaller segments floating in cosmic space. The three-dimensional spatial elements evoke the playful motifs of postmodernism and Fernand Léger's stovepipe cubism (tubism), while the pigment mass – enriched with glue – smeared with a wide scraper evokes the emblematic gestures of Gerhard Richter. As Fábián Takáts put it at her 2023 exhibition: “Even the “background” behind the tube-like, cartridge-box-like formations of her latest canvases is layered. A “base” similar to a corrugated steel plate hides additional depths, increasing the sense of spaciousness and spatiality. The dancing, vibrating bodies, reminiscent of neon signs, are scattered and floating in this seemingly endless grey space”. Andrea Tivadar has had several solo exhibitions in Romanian and Hungarian galleries, from Bucharest, through Cluj-Napoca, to Budapest. She lives and works in Cluj Napoca. Gábor Rieder

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Éva PARAGI
Spikes

Éva PARAGI

Spikes

Year(s)
2019
Technique
oil, canvas
Size
100 x70 cm
Artist's introduction

Éva Paragi is a representative of the Pécs-based geometric painter tradition, who entered the scene at the turn of the millennium. The geometric motifs of her abstract paintings in delicate colours question the minimalist limits of the narrative potential of the image. Born in Budapest, Éva Paragi graduated from the Faculty of Art at the University of Pécs in the second half of the nineties, under the wings of the legendary master of abstraction in Pécs, Ferenc Lantos. Her painting is defined by a dual continuation of the great 20th century modernist tradition of geometric abstraction and the legacy of the colourist painting movement in Pécs. After her early tableau paintings of applied slats and geometric structures, it was in the mid-2010s that she found her main motif, the wooden wedges. She explained the dual nature of this important but invisible studio tool as follows: "The element found, the wooden wedges that frame the canvas, is a rectangle in one direction and a tiny object ending in a point in the other. It has a dual nature. It stretches the frame to help the canvas stay flat. It stretches, it distances to bring things closer and hold them tighter. It is made of wood, a natural object with irregular veins, intersected by straight lines to form a geometric shape. Irregular and regular at the same time." Paragi uses the wedge shapes to create playfully geometric constructions, such as a woven wire fence or a barbed wire star motif. At other times, she has them float freely in a rippling abstract field of gestures, or even collects them in a porcelain bowl in their real, three-dimensional form. Through combinatorial operations that play with the motif, she explores the hidden mechanisms of the transformation of visual element into an image. Paragi lives and works in Szeged. Although she has participated in several exhibitions abroad, her exhibitions are mostly related to Szeged and Pécs. Gábor Rieder

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Ilona KESERÜ
"Nothing is no way"

Ilona KESERÜ

"Nothing is no way"

Year(s)
1990
Technique
oil and mixed media on canvas
Size
200x140 cm
Artist's introduction

The central axis of Ilona Keserü Ilona's painting practice is provided by her forever-changing spatial and temporal relationship to colours, their research and their various manifestations. In the late 1960s, a definite, thematic tendency emerged in Keserü's work, which she simply called colour research. She wanted to expand her earlier red-orange-pink oriented palette, primarily towards the range of spectral colours. Thus, the range of colours that can be achieved through mixing certain pigments, the analysis of colour resolution, the gradual transition of colours and the upper limits of colour intensity became the subject of many of her works. In the early 1970s, Keserü discovered a wide range of skin tones based on the colour theories of Goethe, which harmoniously counterbalanced the vibrant colours utilised by the artist at the time. From the 2000s onwards, in many of her works, flesh colours appeared as a metaphor of the opposite side of the canvas. The latest stage in her ongoing colour research can be traced back to Keserü's 2001 trip to Rome. Looking at the cleaned surfaces of the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, she was confronted with a new – however, common in Michelangelo's time – painterly-optical phenomenon, called cangiante. In essence, it is not the complementary or harmonic colour pairs that are placed side by side, but colour values ​​that mutually enhance each other's light and brilliance and where the choices are made based on personal colour preferences instead of logical reasoning. Keserü was captivated by these unexpected, resounding chords of colour, "sometimes hair-raising things", purple-blue, orange-green combinations, which then served as inspiration for many of her works. Katalin Aknai

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Aladár ALMÁSY
Pessimist Horatius is looking at a stone

Aladár ALMÁSY

Pessimist Horatius is looking at a stone

Year(s)
2018
Technique
watercolour and ink on paper
Size
57,5x75,5 cm
Artist's introduction

Aladár Almásy is one of the most distinctive figures of the generation of graphic artists of the 1970s, whose graphic universe is defined by mystical-psychological symbolism, romantic sensibility and linguistic humour. Noémi Szabó, art historian, described his distinctive character vividly: "He is invested in a romantic-surrealist eclecticism, constructing a dream world far from the current age, full of pretension, but at the same time honesty as well." Born in Debrecen, Almásy completed his graphic studies at the Hungarian College of Fine Arts in 1976. In the 1970s, together with Imre Szemethy, he was the successor of the generation of graphic artists that had defined the previous decade and had established an important tendency and which was marked by the names of Béla Kondor, Arnold Gross, Csaba Rékassy and Ádám Würtz. His first works were etchings, lithographs, aquatints, mezzotints, and pen and ink drawings. His aesthetic world was characterised by jagged, fragmented draughtsmanship, dreamlike, surreal visions and playful linguistic humour. His numerous national solo exhibitions were accompanied by several international exhibitions. In his scandalous statement of 1978, he described himself as an individualistic dreamer: "My existence is a unique visual world of forms, determined by inner emotions, a pure inexhaustible world view, never committed to any fix direction." He gradually drifted towards painting in the 1980s, combining cloud-like patches of colour with his broken line work. His art, which looked to the past, evoked the poetic mood of turn-of-the-century symbolism, from the metaphorical enigma of Baudelaire to the nostalgic dreamscapes of Lajos Gulácsy. The heroes of his poetic narratives are often drawn from cultural history (István Széchenyi, Martin Luther, Zarathustra, etc.). Around the turn of the millennium, the medium of bronze sculpture also appeared in his œuvre, which embraces a wide range of techniques. His successful start to his career was accompanied by numerous state awards in the 1970s and 1980s. He lives and works in Budapest. Gábor Rieder

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Kinga HAJDÚ
Round and Round

Kinga HAJDÚ

Round and Round

Year(s)
2019
Technique
oil on canvas
Size
50x50 cm
Artist's introduction

Kinga Hajdú studied painting at the Hungarian College of Fine Arts between 1985–89 and then participated in the same institution's Postgraduate Artist Training Program between 1989 and 1992. She has been an art teacher at the Hungarian College of Fine Arts' Secondary School of Visual Arts in Budapest since 1991. Kinga Hajdú emerged as a representative of the new generation in the second half of the 1990s, developing her painterly practice through conceptual and figurative means. The universe of these small-scale works relies on precision and a high degree of technical skill. Hajdú's first, invertedly executed paintings were quasi-naturalistic depictions of meat. The inspiration was provided by the meats' swirling structure, which she later developed as an independent motif. She went on to discover the abstract compositional possibilities inherent to the details of her paintings. In these images, she foreshadowed an artistic intention, which we witness in her later work: the importance of details seen through the lens of abstraction. The notions of figurativity and abstraction simultaneously define her artistic practice. Her compositions arranged according to a grid-like structure provide the polar opposite of her earlier circular compositions. While the circle represents the symbol of universal existence, the grid carries associations of finality, delineated areas and an earth-bound sense of gravity. The pictorial structures of Hajdú provide a platform for colour analysis as well. It is no coincidence that the artist is experimenting with earth tones in search of an overall sense of harmony. Júlia Fabényi

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Péter UJHÁZI
14th July 2011.

Péter UJHÁZI

14th July 2011.

Year(s)
2011
Technique
acrylic on loose canvas
Size
106x120x2,5 cm
Artist's introduction

The Munkácsy Prize-winning artist Péter Ujházi graduated in 1966 from the Hungarian College of Fine Arts' Painting Department. There seems to be virtually no trace of his masters, János Kmetty and Aurél Bernáth, in his work, which was the case for many of his contemporaries, who wanted to create "New Art". Ujházi developed his pictorial universe during the 1970s: his artistic position could be characterised with an anti-aesthetic attitude and a new aesthetic, which opposed high art. Ujházi has retained a fundamentally narrative approach to this day (reinforced by textual segments appearing in the works) and has developed this through various technical means: paintings, box pieces, collages, graphic work, assemblages, artist books and a series of wooden, ceramic and iron sculptures. One of his innovations is the unique "carousel perspective", which is established by the simultaneous utilisation of several perspectives. His other characteristic innovation is the figurative attitude reminiscent of children's drawings and graffiti. He has painted three major historical compositions in this style (The Siege of Fehérvár and the Deportation of Wathay, 1972; The Last Pagan Rebellion, 1972–73 and Jellasics's Run, 1973). From the four edges of a painting, a straight path led to scenes staged in a cosmic dimension and the conservation of everyday life's distinct locations and figures in the form of panoramas composed on the surface of the canvas. Expressive colours and a vibrant, gestural brushwork characterises his series depicting landscapes and foliage, which forms a significant chapter in the artist’s oeuvre since the late 1960s. Krisztina Kocsis – Katalin Keserü

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Andrea TIVADAR
Harmony in red II.

Andrea TIVADAR

Harmony in red II.

Year(s)
2019
Technique
oil, glue on canvas
Size
40 x 30 cm
Artist's introduction

Andrea Tivadar is a representative of the young, abstract generation of the internationally renowned Cluj-Napoca scene of the 2010s. In her colourful, “tubist” canvases, she rearranges the forms of modernism with energetic combinations of broad gestures and cylindrical tubular shapes. Andrea Tivadar, born in Satu Mare, Romania, graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in the mid-2010s. Her early maturing painting is a sensual, colouristic surface treatment, rather than an ironic reabstraction. Her paintings show brightly coloured tube shapes, plastically modelled against a neutral background, smeared with broad gestures. These motifs first coiled like wires in an industrial atmosphere, then fell apart into smaller segments floating in cosmic space. The three-dimensional spatial elements evoke the playful motifs of postmodernism and Fernand Léger's stovepipe cubism (tubism), while the pigment mass – enriched with glue – smeared with a wide scraper evokes the emblematic gestures of Gerhard Richter. As Fábián Takáts put it at her 2023 exhibition: “Even the “background” behind the tube-like, cartridge-box-like formations of her latest canvases is layered. A “base” similar to a corrugated steel plate hides additional depths, increasing the sense of spaciousness and spatiality. The dancing, vibrating bodies, reminiscent of neon signs, are scattered and floating in this seemingly endless grey space”. Andrea Tivadar has had several solo exhibitions in Romanian and Hungarian galleries, from Bucharest, through Cluj-Napoca, to Budapest. She lives and works in Cluj Napoca. Gábor Rieder

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Dávid SZENTGRÓTI
Untitled

Dávid SZENTGRÓTI

Untitled

Year(s)
2019
Technique
acrylic and pigment on canvas
Size
192x150 cm
Artist's introduction

Dávid Szentgróti is one of the most outstanding abstract gestural painters of the generation that emerged following the turn of the millennium, who cherishes the decades-old tradition of colourism and non-figurativity typical of Pécs. According to art historian György Várkonyi, "Dávid Szentgróti's paintings meet the timeless criteria of the 'easel painting' in every respect. These paintings are about painting itself: about the first movement and decision (...), about the poetic possibilities of the "application" of paint, the mixing/blending of colours relying on a variety of technical solutions, and the unfolding poetic possibilities." Szentgróti, born in Zalaegerszeg, graduated in painting from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pécs in 2006 and obtained his doctoral degree (DLA) in 2013. Since the 2000s, his œuvre has been enriched by the non-figurative painting tradition of Pécs, from the surrealist forms of Ferenc Martyn to the colourism of Ilona Keserü, to the compositional logic of Ernő Tolvaly. Vivid colours, expressive brushwork and figurative motifs between these gestures defined Szentgróti's works from the 2000s. In the 2010s, as he simplified his motifs, the abstract gesture applied with a broad brush became increasingly dominant. Towards the end of the decade, Szentgróti's non-figurative imagery – with its varied surface treatment – became increasingly dense. In contrast, the alternation of broad brushstrokes and expressive surfaces was replaced by fields of acrylic paint mixed with pigments, transforming the canvases into an increasingly bright and translucent direction. The paintings, built up from thin coats of paint, evoke the aesthetics and layering of digital image editing software. Although the seemingly spontaneous gestures evoke the instinctive image-making of Informel Painting, Szentgróti follows a carefully pre-determined artistic program. In the words of art historian János Schneller: "The superimposition of the paint layers on the surface of the canvas, i.e. the consciously evoked structures, is perhaps the most important aspect of the concept." This artistic process, which questions the ontology of painting, cultivates and rewrites tradition simultaneously. Present on the local and national scene, Szentgróti is a teacher at the Secondary School of Art in Pécs. He lives and works in Pécs.

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0214
Arnold GROSS
Transylvanian Landscape with Goat

Arnold GROSS

Transylvanian Landscape with Goat

Year(s)
circa 1960
Technique
copperplate engraving on paper
Size
9x15 cm
Artist's introduction

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Tamás HENCZE
Drawing at Vertical Angle II.

Tamás HENCZE

Drawing at Vertical Angle II.

Year(s)
1984
Technique
oil, charcoal and felt-tip pen on paper
Size
100x70 cm
Artist's introduction

Tamás Hencze considered Dezső Korniss to be his master and the Zugló Circle – which examined abstract art and the theoretical work of Béla Hamvas – as his school. He was a winner of the Kossuth Prize and a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts. His painting practice, which initially focused on the directness of the gesture and the Pop art collage, became individually motivated in the second half of the 1960s. He used stencils and a rubber roller when spreading the evenly applied (black) paint, creating precise transitions and eliciting pulsating spatial effects on the picture plane. The dynamic, repetitive, saturated, fading and empty surfaces appeared as the universal rhythm of life. The structures of his paintings – which "emerged from the point" – coincided with the era's scientific worldview and the minimalist attitude in the arts. His works could also be connected to the Op-art movement, which sought to examine vision. However, Hencze relied on a more complex understanding of perception, introducing the picturesque experience of appearance and disappearance. These works were featured in the unofficial exhibitions at the end of the decade (e.g. Iparterv, 1968) and subsequently in European exhibitions displaying contemporary Hungarian art. In the 1980s, he reinterpreted his images from the beginning of his career: he "froze" huge gestures on large canvases, which were seen as part of the era's postmodern turn. These works were not straightforward gestural paintings but exact reproductions of gestures constructed with templates, rubber cylinders, a few intensely saturated colours, and light, which lent the moment's spatial-material (iconic) reality frozen onto the picture plane. In his work on paper, Hencze occasionally lined up the technical tools connected to the creative process of these more recent gestural images, such as the scissor, the ruler and the various geometric shapes. Katalin Keserü

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István GELLÉR B.
Opening form

István GELLÉR B.

Opening form

Year(s)
n.d.
Technique
tempera on paper
Size
43x43 cm
Artist's introduction

The geometric painting practice of B. István Gellér is unique among the aspirations of the Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde. The emblematic structures of his 1970s artworks, which were constructed with softer lines, but edited with symmetrical rigour, are typical domestic examples of Pop art-influenced Signal Painting. One of the most critical issues of progressive Hungarian painting in the 1960s was the reconciliation of global trends and local traditions, which notion defined the artistic practice of Gellér as well. His passion for drawing led him as a child to Ferenc Martyn, followed by the free school of Ferenc Lantos. His trip to Western Europe deeply inspired him in the late 1960s. During his visit to London, he got acquainted with the work of Bridget Riley, Frank Stella and Victor Vasarely. Combining his recent international experiences with the local artistic traditions of Pécs, he developed an organic and symbolic geometric language. He sought to create an internationally relevant, locally inspired, but at the same time personally motivated artistic voice. His recurring motifs include the almost anthropomorphic, three-lobed, softened triangle, the "embracing" shapes, and the box-like space enhanced with a sense of depth utilising perspective. He endowed his geometric shapes – which filled the entire surface – with personal meaning far removed from the essence of Geometric Abstraction. He was less interested in theoretical problems than in the lyrical transformation of symbols. He worked on creating a "geometry of personal credibility" based on individual truths. Fanni Magyar

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Tamás MELKOVICS
Blue kit Composition 9.

Tamás MELKOVICS

Blue kit Composition 9.

Year(s)
2020
Technique
modular composition made of 59 elements, carved and coloured MDF board
Size
240x90x80 cm
Artist's introduction

While watching the sculptures of Tamás Melkovics, they address me as acquaintances. Sculptures that we think are about to move, to crawl off the plinth, or perhaps even signal to us with some kind of sound. They are familiar because within the organic abstract world, the artist has found a language that speaks to our collective unconscious and evokes associations with the living world, living things, birth and movement. The art of Tamás Melkovics constantly expands the sculptural framework, but does not cross a certain boundary, it remains within the limits of the discipline. The artist graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2012 as a sculptor, his master was Ádám Farkas. In 2018 and 2021, he was awarded the Gyula Derkovits Fine Arts Scholarship. He exhibited at the Parthenon-Frieze Room in 2017 and at the Várfok Gallery Project Room in 2019. He has participated in several group exhibitions in Budapest, Szentendre, Székesfehérvár, Dunaújváros, Pécs and Edinburgh. In addition to private collections, his art is also included in the collections of the Ferenczy Museum Centre, the Csók István Gallery in Székesfehérvár, the Kiscelli Museum - Budapest Gallery, and the ICA-D Institute of Contemporary Art in Dunaújváros. In his creations, he seeks systems, basic rules, regularities, as if to reach back to the roots and structure of life and the perceptual world. The recurring basic modules are perhaps designed to explore these basic regularities. Movement is fundamental in his work. Even those works that are separate creatures begin a dialogue with each other. In the language of science, the sculptures can refer to fractals, to the principles of growth and evolution, the dynamics of nature, where nothing ever stops for a moment, where everything is in constant change, transformation, movement and interaction, because this is the basis of biological life. While the artworks often resemble natural forms such as trees or fruits, the anthropomorphic sculptures, which resemble Tony Cragg, question the foundations of human existence, and the complex structures that eventually settle into one final shape point to human relationships and connections. Délia Vékony

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Szilárd CSEKE
Nature Memorial I.

Szilárd CSEKE

Nature Memorial I.

Year(s)
2009
Technique
oil and lacquer on canvas
Size
170x130 cm
Artist's introduction

Szilárd Cseke is one of the well-known artists of the generation who entered the scene in the 1990s, becoming known at home and internationally for his decorative, bright forest paintings and kinetic installations. Emese Révész analysed his painterly vision as a typical attitude of the 2000s: 'Cseke's painterly attitude is also a generational creed, the basic idea of which is the rehabilitation of painterly beauty, the defiant embrace of "pleasure painting". Returning to the old role of the painter, he is an illusionist who creates experiences, and his painting is both an object of relaxation and meditation." Szilárd Cseke, born in Pápa, studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Pécs and then at the Hungarian College of Fine Arts during the regime change. He first constructed mobile works of art from plastic, car tyres and fans, then painted monochrome still-lifes and storyboard-like scenes with soft, ephemeral brushwork. He found his distinctive stylistic world in the early 2000s as a prominent representative of the new mainstream of digital image-based painting emerging at the turn of the millennium. His decorative period, which began in 2002, with its serene mood, analysed the romantic, symbolic duality of forest trees and sky in a post-digital optical experience. He broke down the photo-based landscape into layers and then built up the image space step by step, creating a varied facture. In places, he scraped back or sanded back the smeared, painted, dripped-dotted oil, acrylic, enamel and lacquer paint. The rich surfaces of different properties and craft pushed the conceptual boundaries of digital image-making and traditional fine art. As art historian Sándor Hornyik said: "From a distance, the painting as a whole gives the impression of a digialtised photograph, but up close, the complexity of the 'ground' is revealed; the green patches do not break down into pixels but are organised into subtle brushstrokes (...) What is exciting about the end result is that it is both painterly and hyper-modern. The generic subject becomes secondary, but the technical complexity works brilliantly." After the emblematic forest paintings, Cseke returned to compositions following life and then built kinetic, conceptual installations with motors – analysing social relations. His largest installation ensemble, Sustainable Identities, was presented at the Hungarian pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2015. Constantly experimenting with new techniques, around 2020, Cseke revisited forest paintings, reverting to nature, in bright visionary colours, in response to the urban lifestyle changed by the pandemic. Cseke lives and works in Budapest. Gábor Rieder

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József CSATÓ
Vocoder dreams

József CSATÓ

Vocoder dreams

Year(s)
2019
Technique
oil and acrylic on canvas
Size
130x160 cm
Artist's introduction

József Csató is a representative of the young generation of painters who showcase a hybrid understanding of painting, creating their works by deploying a wide range of pictorial and multimedia tools of the current age while remaining within the conventions of painting without relying on its representational function. The imitation of abstraction and figurativity is reversed: the figurative emerges as abstract, the abstract as figurative. An "as if" effect in a medium that does not cater to obsolete notions of beauty. Radical assertations in friendly narrative mode. József Csató's paintings speak a unique visual language. His figures and shapes merge to become a psychedelic personal symbolism. Amorphous forms appear as real, existing entities: plant-like beings or single-celled animals magnified to the extreme. These quasi-figural and abstract works, or image organisations, fuse several art-historical references into current fantasy worlds. The repetitive forms are re-expressed in the pictorial – compositional – order of the images as if the dynamics of this painted, animate world were put into motion by exactly these speculative botanical experiments. Besides his visual art, Csató is an inspired musician, working sometimes with cosmic sound effects that transport the listener into spherical dimensions. Julia Fabényi

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Ferenc LANTOS
Plan (DEDÁSZ Enamel Plan)

Ferenc LANTOS

Plan (DEDÁSZ Enamel Plan)

Year(s)
1968
Technique
tempera and collage on paper
Size
45x35 cm
Artist's introduction

Ferenc Lantos studied under Ferenc Martyn's supervision in Pécs and at the College of Fine Arts in Budapest. He considered art to be a form of cognition. His path from abstraction through geometric forms lead to a systematic pictorial thinking. As an educator, he ventured to influence attitudes: he built a new foundation for the relationship between the fine arts and the other art forms. Lantos developed his activities in relation to architecture, literature, music and the modern sciences. The interactions between the two foundational elements of his pictorial universe – the square and the circle – were based on mathematical operations. He relied on the enlargement and reduction of these, their intersection possibilities, their potential interferences to establish a system of variations based on emerging forms. He also founded his public art program on this principle. He hypothesised that since variation always expresses order and is infinite, due to the inherent colouristic possibilities, it can be considered as a model of intellectual cognition and a visual game – and is thus capable of mobilising society (exhibition titled Nature-Vision-Creation, 1972–75). His systems of elements – which was utilised within interior design, building decoration and outdoor projects – could be connected to the era's dynamically developing visual culture. The successful mural enamel project at the Bonyhád Enamel Factory ran for years, during which his colleagues and students also participated. Especially in Pécs and the Transdanubia region, the exterior and interior walls of many public buildings and factories were enlivened during the 1970s by this series of variations. Lantos was a winner of the Kossuth Prize and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. A permanent exhibition of his selected works is on display in Pécs. Katalin Keserü

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