Áron Lőrincz at Longtermhandstand, Budapest

What happens when you create a world of your own, even if it exists only in your head? And how can you distill your identity into a single flag?

In his latest exhibition, Áron Lőrincz raises a collection of his own Jolly Rogers. Traditionally flown by pirate ships, the Jolly Roger was a flag used to declare identity and presence, most famously through the skull and crossbones. In Lőrincz’s hands, this historic symbol becomes something personal and playful, a flag under which to define one’s own position in the world. Here, the pirate flag is not a threat, but a personal statement: a symbol of stepping away from the constant noise of the outside world, stripping away its madness, and creating your own rhythm, your own rules, your own world.

Within the dense, jungle like environments of the paintings, Áron’s figures are simultaneously part of the world and detached from it. Their surroundings envelop them, while their intense colors visually separate them from everything around them. Pirates, flags, wild animals, and Cinka, Áron’s cat, become part of a playful, distinctive, yet deeply personal symbolic language. The Jolly Roger works combining painting with hand sewn textiles further expand this mythology.

Alongside the exhibition, Pirate, a new experimental short film by Áron Lőrincz and Luca Bonta, makes its debut. The film follows a modern day pirate’s mutiny against the madness of the world, with Cinka as his companion and fellow conspirator. Rather than offering a critique of society, it explores a possible path for the individual: how can we love the noisy, dizzying jungle of contemporary life without becoming part of its madness ourselves?

In the shadow of the Jolly Roger, rebellion ultimately becomes a claim to one’s own happiness.

–Text by Péter Bencze