Nowadays, nature depictions of all kinds have become a hot topic, and the frightening reality of climate change has become a trend in contemporary art. Linked to this, the term ‘anthropocene’ has now also emerged in artistic concepts, implying the end of the world and projecting post-apocalyptic visions with explosive drama.
The following selection of recent works by three artists is a departure from this trend. Nature is the starting point for the works of painters Szilvia Fekete and Dániel Bajkó and sculptor Krisztián Balogh. The timeless and archetypal representation of forests and trees is combined with a kind of ritual reverence and connects the three artists.
Szilvia Fekete’s expressive works, which extend the composition beyond the boundaries of the image, often depict the eternal and invincible tree that surrounds and survives all buildings, together with the built, artificial environment.
With a metaphysical background, Krisztián Balogh’s lyrical photographs capture with a refined sensitivity and insight the unearthly peace and contemplative silence that only the forest, time standing between the rhythmically repeating trunks of trees, can offer to the ever-rushing, drifting soul of our time.
Using the representation of wood as a geometrically abstract element, Dániel Bajkó’s works, which are not without an engineering mindset, also place the concept of painting as an object in a new context, while fusing art and science on the border between figurativity and non-figurativity.