Diving Planes

Levente Baranyai’s new series, Diving Planes focuses on the imagery of no longer used, already wasted airplanes, which were put the so called „airplane cemeteries”. In his large-size oil canvases, just as in his previous series, he is monitoring Earth from an eagle-eye position; from enough distance to point out not only the visual but the social, the civilizational, and the philosophycal relations.

This distant viewpoint is able to suggest such details and phenomenas, which are never visible from the inside but only appear when looked at from a great distance. His paintings work in the same technical way, as they fall apart into abstract shapes and paint textures when viewed too close, but from a proper distance, beautiful shapes and forms become clear, nature, as never seen comes to life.

Baranyai’s richly textured works refer not only to classic reliefs but to 3D maps, yet do not want to be fotorealistic at all. This series is a clear coninuation of his earlier works, but now inserts a new object between the Earth and the observerving eye, and that is the old and already destructed airplanes.

Man’s primal desire to fly is realized by the first airplanes, and it is one of Baranyai’s primal interest, and now this object of desire is realized by cold and distant blues while the colours of the ground is painted with the warmest browns.

The lined-up planes make beautiful, ordered marks on the canvases, sometimes reminding us to eastern carpet patterns, sometines flying birds, but mostly to the never ending movement of life itself.