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

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