BULLÁS, József

Zalaegerszeg, 1958

The painterly practice of József Bullás started in the early 1980s with representative, figurative images in the spirit of the Transavantgard and New Sensibility. Later, during his travels to the East, Bullás discovered the potential of ornamentation and gradually moved away from depictive narrative painting. "I want to create abstract paintings that combine »traditional« Western Constructivism with Eastern ornamentation, avoiding the associations of nature, literature and symbolism. Instead of the postmodern remixing of themes, my goal is to interpret phenomena with »my eyes«, to see again." – the artist claimed. The paintings of Bullás oscillate between illusionistic and expressive qualities. His later pieces, regarding this dynamic alternation, reveal a more controlled approach, but at the same time a search for new aesthetic paths as well. Contemporary art's tendency of turning towards design, furthermore the Minimalist and Modernist values of current design direct the medium of painting from a content-centred approach towards a clean, transparent, form-oriented conception. The colour scheme of Bullás's paintings has also expanded in recent years. The organic colours characteristic of the artist are increasingly complemented with new, unusual shades. Synthetic colours appear on his canvases, which denotes the emergence of a new image type and a shift in aesthetic sensitivity. In Bullás' recent works, we witness this aspect becoming self-conscious, as the artist reinterprets his previous ideas and techniques in light of the millennial turn. Zsolt Petrányi