Painter Szabolcs Bozó’s playful, sometimes dramatic and humorous world is rooted in the history and well-known characters of classical Hungarian animation. However, Bozó does not copy but, drawing from memory, he reimagines the figures he first encountered in childhood to populate his canvases and create exciting compositions. His colourful, large-scale works have become provocative contributions to contemporary painting. The Budapest show introduces Szabolcs Bozó’s work to Hungarian audiences, while also providing insight into the management of contemporary art and the unique path of a successful artistic career.
Our primary objective, however, is to show how Szabolcs Bozó’s art has evolved in recent years: his work has moved from what professional circles dubbed ‘cutism’ in a direction in which the psychological and social status of the painted figures has, albeit symbolically, become part of the pictures’ meaning. The artist’s earlier paintings, typically featuring a single character, were conceived in the simplified and deliberately naïve approach of artists like Yoshitomo Nara and André Butzer, while the ironically or grotesquely painted figures of his more recent, multi-figure compositions are engaged in a relationship with one another. These works can also be linked with different art historical references: viewed alongside artists such as James Ensor, Lajos Gulácsy or Menyhért Tóth, they express the fragility of the human psyche and man’s communal existence. This transformation becomes evident throughout the exhibition, opening the door to a more complex interpretation of Szabolcs Bozó’s art. The exhibition’s title, Soulmate, also highlights this deeper, more complex network of relationships, while being a reference to one of the displayed works.
In the interiors of NEO, visitors can view twenty large-scale paintings by Bozó and eighty smaller-scale graphic works, which sum up his career to date. The pictures will come to Budapest from private collections across Europe, including London, Milan, Copenhagen, Stockholm and, of course we will also receive works from collections in Budapest. The installation to be exhibited at the show will be composed by Bozó from an assemblage of paintings and their sketches to evoke the atmosphere of his studio.