This year’s jubilee exhibition at the Várfok Gallery showcases his latest works from the past two years, which, in his words, are ‘figurative but retain the right to abstraction’. In his colourist-inspired series on paper, I am not alone (2023), darker-toned anthropomorphic figures emerge from a softer-coloured swirling grid of lines. Decorated with silver motifs, these figures recall in their ornamentation and elaborateness a system of folk motifs that do not belong specifically to any ethnic tradition, but represent a new, objectively universalised and subjectively filtered system of symbols, close to the ancient, ethnic, for us somewhat exotic and non-Eurocentric conception of art that runs through Szirtes’ entire oeuvre.
The circumstances of the creation of the series +36 degrees Celsius, painted in the summer of 2024 in the midst of the greatest heat, and his series of paintings Golden Truth | +36 degrees Celsius are of crucial importance for Szirtes. His process of creation can be viewed an action, a performance or a ritual, and his paintings bear the imprint of these gestures and forms of movement, of the creative activity itself. The starting point of the series is his 1987 canvas, Golden Truth I where a golden, metallic surface is dominant, playing an important role also in the continuation of the series, his works from this year. The use of the gold-dust paint transform each painting into multi-view compositions.