Tamás Jovanovics completed his studies in painting at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and the Université de Provence (1999), then absolved his doctoral studies in Aix-en-Provence and Budapest (2004). He attended postdoctoral courses in Provence and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. During the Hungarian Universitas Program, he created monumental, architectural – steel and aluminium – sculptures for three dormitory buildings in Nyíregyháza. In the prevalent internationality of the generation of artists after the change of regime, his works can be distinguished from his contemporaries by his strikingly sensitive utilisation of tools and the fine-tuned juxtaposition of lines and colours combining rationality and chance. According to Jovanovics, his work procedure can be described with an “almost robotic minimalism at the level of form and a certain poetry in the field of colours,” in the words of Péter Nádas: “extreme asceticism and hedonism simultaneously”. The image starts with a minimal set of elements: a square canvas and coloured pencils. The dense lines drawn with a ruler are somewhat accidental and have flaws – they are unique despite their engineering and precision. Kinetic surfaces are born, sometimes from the orientation and intersection of straight lines. In other cases, it is the fragmented images, which make several formats possible simultaneously. His “Linear” paintings were first created on a white ground, then from the 2010s on a black backdrop. Coloured lines emerge running vertically and at right angles next to the tight horizontal lines. Line and colour transform into geometry: sometimes, because of the colour changes, illusionist (virtual) forms are elaborated, resulting in an optically moving web of interlocking ornamental surfaces. Katalin Keserü