All over the world, mothers are gluing their son’s drawings to the fridge with misty eyes, sighing to their relatives that one day the child will become an artist. What happens when they happen to be right? Ádám Mányoki’s series of paintings is at once about the mental and physical differences between children’s drawings and artworks, the path between them, and the constant fascination that is not lost over time.
According to brain researchers, the big change, the real growing up, happens around the age of 25, when the frontal lobe is physiologically finished developing – that’s when we can really start to think about our decisions. The irony of psychology is that this clairvoyance can be tolerated for about five years: according to 21st century observations, emotional regression is common after 30 (especially among men). This can mean anything from sentimental nostalgia to escapism, but its main feature is a return to childhood, a revival of old hobbies and interests.
Personally, Mányoki would watch the cultic yet mainstream Dragon Ball Z like he did a few decades ago. What’s definitely more appealing than reality is a world where the work pays off and where a little boy can grow up to be a fallible hero if he wants it badly enough. In his paintings, frustration is unleashed as stake-free aggression, his figures shaking off epic evil with a swivel kick like embarrassing ordinariness. Their manga-like, anime-like exaggerated muscles swell like in anatomy books : it all starts with the graphics. They could almost be real if the gestures didn’t abstract them back into the realm of dreams.
SSJ2: an important step in the steady evolution of Dragon Ball’s Saiyan’s, when they transform into the Super Saiyan 2 form.