The Totality and the Rest

My painting has changed a lot recently. The works show contradictory, and from an aesthetical point of view incompatible, and mainly abstract elements, nevertheless with the classical approach of the unity of the composition. So not an assembly of arbitrary elements.

The two levels of the painting aren’t „equal“ here. One part emerges with the demand to be the TOTALITY, the other part only as fragmentary rest which remains excluded. My paintings have changed, because it’s a reaction on the currently ongoing shifts and displacements within the European societies. Those shifts are probably much more profound then we think. I ask myself if an intellectual with his prevailing socio-critical attitude can keep his progressive role, or if this only leads to a formation of isolated, self-referred groups.

It’s clear that my paintings come from Eastern Europe which in his political thinking is closer to Russia then to the liberal European thinking. There exists no dialogue between the majority gathering around the central power and those who criticize or reject the centralization and standardization.

In the last few years I showed in the exhibitions paintings with direct political statements. To my mind „The Totality and the Rest“ is also an attempt of political painting, but in a much less direct and rather abstract way. This means that I’d like to abstain myself from direct political messages in order to position a problem or a question in a much broader aesthetic field of interpretation.

Ákos Birkás