István Pető, painter and graphic artist, has been living in France for nearly forty years, and for the first time in decades, the Hungarian public will be able to see his graphic work, selected from the last 15 years, at the exhibition entitled Double Moment, which will be held at MissionArt. In Pető’s oeuvre, painting and printmaking are closely and inseparably linked, the two genres complementing each other and in dialogue with each other, forming the coherence of his oeuvre.
Pető’s exciting approach to graphic art is presented in the exhibition “Double Moment”, in which he combines classical graphic techniques (etching, etching, aquatint, lithography, stain etching, cold needle) with photo-based reproduced graphics and unique processes (monotype, painterly solutions, colour applications). The compositional solutions in his prints resonate sensitively with the concept that characterises his painting: his system of motifs, which are organic in origin but subjectively rewritten into structures, initiates a dialogue in a pictorial space essentially divided into two different surfaces.
Pető explicitly avoids narrative storytelling; his meditative-philosophical approach to contemplative contemplation is based on a discourse of dense, tension-filled dark surfaces and the graphic gesture unfolding on blank white paper: solidity and emptiness, perceptible phenomena of the world and emotional responses to them, active and passive, tension and lightness are juxtaposed. And yet these opposites could not exist without each other. Although Pető’s stylistic orientation is somewhere in the realm of abstract/lyrical expressionism, his way of thinking and artistic expression allows for analogies from a much wider range.
In István Pető’s exhibition entitled Double Mosaic, we can get to know the artist’s graphic world through nearly thirty works, and the few paintings also on show provide an opportunity for the dialogue created in each print to initiate a productive dialogue with his painting world.