Inspired by Hinduism and far eastern philosophy, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his 1818 work ‘The World as Will and Representation’ that the world is shrouded in a veil of ‘maya’, or illusion as we call it. For this reason, we are unable to see it in its true nature: everyone has their own idea of the world, which is inevitably dependent on the individual.
With his latest series of paintings, Dávid Merényi aims to lift this “veil of obscurity”, the metaphorical plastic curtain of global capitalism, so that we, as viewers, can also peek behind it. The true nature of the world today and its constantly changing value structures are revealed by observing the things around us, insofar as we can recognise the self-referential systems of these things the way it was written by Baudrillard in his simulacrum theory.
The curtain motif, which often appears in Western art, hiding the objective idealistic truths, is meant to refer that if we can observe things as they purely are, we have the possibility to get to know their true essence. Merényi’s most recent works make the fundamental elements of modern everyday life the subject of aesthetic observation and especially reception aesthetics, such as lightboxes used for advertising that display discount coupons or the signs of metro stops. The focus is thus on urban elements that are essentially unconventional subjects in traditional art practices.
Merényi, however, attempts to expand the borders of referencing that have hitherto seemed self-evident in contemporary aesthetic judgements by painting objects that are not inherently produced with artistic intent but rather from a utilitarian perspective, and by putting them into new perspectives of meaning. His methodology is similar to that of the American sociologist Jack Mazirow’s theory of the transformative learning model, which, in a nutshell, explores the possibilities of changing the way meaning is given to things.
In the exhibition ‘View through a Plastic Curtain’, the advertising surfaces of consumer goods and the places and – in Marc Augé’s terminology – non-places of cities used merely for transit are depicted deprived of their original function. While these functional devices, mainly in public transport-related sites, may seem to be mere transmitters of impersonal information, Merényi, with his unique sense of beauty and post-structuralist painting methods, highlights their values, which are undoubtedly forming our contemporary visual culture.
Rebeka Kovács