Artist: Gábor Pintér
Exhibition title: Second Day In Paradise (Gold, Girls, Guns And Proxima B)
Curated by: Peter Bencze
Venue: Torula, Győr, Hungary
Date: April 5 – May 12, 2024
Photography: ©Áron Weber / All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Longtermhandstand
To say that Gábor Pintér is a figurative painter is not exactly wrong but definitely way too simplistic. While the young Hungarian artist is certainly interested in classical problems of painting such as depictions of space, light and shapes or the composition within the frame, on a deeper level his main concern could be said to be the ways we perceive. Where do we find an entry point into the composition of a painting, how do our eyes wander, and with them our thoughts? Where does our attention go? Are there objects, placements or details that exert a gravitational pull on our gaze, and if so, when are we expelled from that orbit for our eyeballs to wander through the galaxy – in this case the exhibition – just like a rogue exoplanet on its unhinged path of eternal darkness?
Style is yet another notably painterly aspect that warrants our examination in Pintér’s practice. His use of a variety of styles is impeccable on a technical level but more than that the accumulation of styles, which could be critized either as a lack of one particular style, or belittled as mere eclecticism, constitutes in fact its very own style. A style that achieves an uncanny timelessness very similar to our lived realities – be it the mishmash of our apartment furniture or the hodgepodge of architectures in our city scapes – and all the histories they amalgamate. Pintér furnishes his paintings carefully: first a leitmotif is established, that will carry the composition then the scenery, background and supporting roles are created. Sometimes the different items come from a vast collection of photos or drawings but sometimes they also emerge spontaneously from memories. The dramaturgy of both, objects and subjects as well as their ascribed style feel like a surface where its different parts are ‘loading’ in different speeds as well as in varying ‘resolutions’ – as they range from naturalistic and precise to blurry and abstract. Or to use another analogy from the digital realm: Pintér’s paintings could be said to be the analog equivalent of having dozens of (obviously irreplaceable and unsaveable) tabs open in your browser and magically being able to merge them into one.
And so what is it that we actually see in these paintings, and installations and drawings? Intuitively we can feel the clear intentionality of the artist in his work, yet simultaneously there is also an obscuring reticence to reveal too much, leaving us with scenes hinting at concise issues of our present as well as more metaphysical questions of the ages. Every brush stroke seems to be planned, perhaps a habit gained from the artists past in graffiti and porcelain painting. The actual imagery – be it a photo-realistic advertisement style strawberry splashing into water in a Malevich like black square, or a comic figure skeleton smoking a cigarette and literally falling apart, an over-sized styrofoam macaron, hiding a roman type human relief in its cream filling or a Mondrian-dressed woman holding her head in desperation – is meant to jumpstart our imagination and thought in an act of self-reflection on our cognition and the workings of our minds while critically reflecting on the downfalls of today’s consumer society as well as possible exit strategies – idealistic and realistic ones.
And if all else fails, we just take our gold, girls, guns and leave for Proxima B.
1 Proxima b is an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to the Sun and part of the larger triple star system Alpha Centauri. It is about 4.2 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, making it and Proxima d the closest known exoplanets to the Solar System.
-Laura Amann
