Glaze

Glaze. The title of the exhibition presenting István Szántó’s new series refers on the one hand to ginger breads, which are not only painted but also baked by the artist. His ‘neo-pop-art’ is inspired by ‘archeforms’ of Hungarian folk art and by the fairy figures of tales, by the demons populating children’s and adult’s fantasies. The materia is then enriched with direct or indirect philosophical contents of (eastern) popular mythologies, for instance taken from the The Monkey King. Like the ‘story-festoon’ around the monkey’s figure, Szántó’s picturesque scenes are stations of a continuous journey, during which he’s accompanied by knights and monkeys, which finally help us to find our source and ourselves on this way. Szántó’s work is characterized by figurative, narrative depiction, irony and fantasy and the search of cultural identity through the means o f Hungarian folk art.

Glaze. On the other hand, the title refers to the glazed cake – and then to the painted surface of the canvas. The painter bakes real gingerbreads, but he experiments on them on purpose: they become reliefs with sometimes unpainted, ‘raw’, light brown surfaces, but he can also calcinate them and then accentuate the plasticity and the effects of the dark material, or he can also just colour them. Moreover, Szántó continues the procedure by painting these elements onto the canvas, he ‘swells’ them from toy marionettes to heroic two-dimensional motifs: the surfaces become then pastose and colourful, iridescent like eosin glaze, or on the contrary they keep their matt, „unglazed”, consistent essence, but they can also melt like sugarcoast. Szántó creates by these materials dynamic, almost ‘baroque’ compositions and symbols. Then, they come to life, step out of the paintings bec oming, according to the painter, emblems of the regional, Eastern and Central European spirit which is the source and the determination of his identity. These creatures cut loose in real life and inside our fantasy world and inspire us, as his receivers, to play with them.

Glaze. Like a mask, it covers and hereby embellishes reality, creates illusion. It is ironic too, and however, protective as well (like knightly virtues and knight armors) – but paradoxically, it indicates and discloses – by the use of breezy colours – the essential phenomena, which is hidden behind the mask. Glaze. If it glances off, the picture is clarified. As in front of a curved mirror, we face Szántó’s defenseless but provocative, proudly aligned monkey army as independant creatures, self-sufficient creations. They are without glaze but not naked: they are clothed in their specific picturesque armor, dressed with pictorial and human qualities, those proper to Szántó’s and to his epoch.

Iványi Bianca