Artist: Luca Lovász
Exhibition title: Magic Maze
Venue: Horizont Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
Date: October 19 – November 30, 2022
Photography: Dávid Biró, Digitális Képműhely / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Horizont Gallery, Budapest
The reality of our everyday life can especially be dissolved in the realm of our imagination, which frees us from our inhibitions, as well as puts our obtained knowledge and experiences into a particular perspective. Just like the protagonist of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot or even Alice, the titular character of the novel of Lewis Carroll, found the answers they needed to solve their problems in the imaginary world. However, the permanent comprehension of things in our daily life is not that dreamlike. In spite of this, to deal with our dilemmas and difficulties, it is recommended to break away from the reality of present, to change our perspective, which could help us find the way to the solution.
Luca Lovász’s Magic maze exhibition deals with the particularity of her generation, the state of coming of age and uncertainty. In her work, she displays the crises, worries and anxieties that concerns her and her generation in a curious, unreal disguise. By using easily identifiable and clear symbols in her paintings, she both defines them and, more importantly, self-reflexively diminishes them. Similarly to the above mentioned protagonists of literary works, her emblematic female manga character winds up in a maze full of challenges, where these particular signs and motifs offer guidance and help finding the right pathway. Even though the paintings are not explicitly narrative and do not depict linear stories, they do depict different life situations and critical points, therefore offering us an overview of our present. Besides that, their quintessence is the time trapped inside them, which enhances the feeling of despair that comes with way-finding. At the same time, it also provides us infinite calm and the celebral idleness of nihilism. No wonder we would rather opt for the timeless existence in the fantasy world instead of the problems of reality.
