Appetizing fruits that have never existed, the intertwining of different foreign cultures evoking utopia… Nagyházi Contemporary Gallery presents the latest series of the interwoven intellectual Surrealism by Naomi Devil.
The classical perfection of painting and form that became an emblematic feature of the artworks of the Hungarian painter, who lives and works in both Vienna and Budapest, challenges the reflexes of our instincts and our mind simultaneously. After her compositions that won a number of awards in Hungary and at international exhibitions and turned the beloved portraits of the Baroque era into postmodern icons, Naomi Devil clearly „puts on the table” another classical genre – this time both literally and figuratively.
In front of the almost soothingly undulating blue of the deep sea, we can see piles of fruits and plant forms reminiscent of Dutch masterpieces of the 17th century that simultaneously arouse the most basic human desires – since fruit can never be interpreted merely the embodiment of food or one’s meal. However, the vibrant colours and shapes that push the boundaries of abstraction are not still lifes – their models never existed since the very thing that we can consider one of the standards of creative imagination and artistic technique since the ancient times is the ability to deceive. The line between our desires and obsessions is thin, and we believe them to be real just as we would almost bite into the fruits of Naomi’s pictures.
The other series of the exhibition plays with the viewer’s visual preconceptions in the similar, above mentioned way, yet here we can see organically intertwined figures depicted close to nature, wearing ritualistically stiff masks, also becoming the paraphrases of the still highly popular „double portraits” of the Renaissance. In the case of the almost ritualistically stiff masks, exotic jewelry, and the plants entwined around them, we try in vain to recognize the specific „ancient” or „distant” civilization. The sources used by Naomi Devil, including African and Japanese motifs, show a mythological unity that could never have been created in this way, she is only now playing with the obsession that this is also can be our reality.