Dénes Wächter (1966, Budapest) graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (1990), his master is Pál Gerzson. Contrary to the Cézannean approach, he does not deny the view, but works from it. He sees the resulting works of art as as much a part of our contemporary world as a chair and uses them as such. Drawing on the high and popular art memories of his childhood, his paintings juxtapose and stitch together visual fragments from different eras. Spiritual and physical layering is evident in every moment of his work. We are compelled to understand a kind of associative game for reception. The game is worth highlighting, both in addition to the fact that his paintings could stand as psychological self-portraits. Just as important, if not more important, is the humour and irony they represent.
Early on he found his individual voice, still in use today, his own eclectic style, which combines classical art with pop art, the decollage technique of the new realists, the illusionism of op-art and pattern painting.
He does not believe in art history as a separate historicity to be treated separately and perhaps this contributes to his disrespect for what appear to be beautifully and technically painted base layers in his paintings.
In his 2013 painting, Broad Shoes, he breaks a baroque putto idyll with a nonfigurative-looking ‘net’, and then clarifies the title for us with advertisements and postcards from the past that have been brought to life.
In addition to the world of drawn motifs and ‘nets’ (often borrowed from classical art media: mosaics, stained glass windows, Arabic floor motifs, etc.), the frequent use of pin-up girls as sex symbols of his childhood, women for sale, is striking.
Through his work we are given the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the colours and figures as a disjointed chaos, sometimes tending towards kitsch, but as we stop and piece together the image visually, we realise that thought is layered with object culture, and the fractured view is also a particular interpretation of existence.
Sára Bárdi