January 30, 2019 - March 9, 2019
Zsolt TIBOR exhibits portraits at VILTIN Gallery on his fifth solo exhibition. The show of impersonal images of the past two years attempts to analyze our present reality in connection with the past passed on us. The artist presents this classic genre with his usual free association, collage-like compositions, sometimes combined with topographic solutions, resulting in a certain adapting, structured image building. The large drawings, paintings continue to be in the shape of the traditional panel, which, unlike his previous practice, are not placed in a closed frame. Instead, he displays them under airy Plexiglass, separating the artwork barely from the wall of the exhibition space. His images are thus consciously open towards the outside world, which is emphasized also by the gestures and lines running across the edges of the image. The alternation of the diary-like, rich elements and the expressive gesture and material-focused interventions add a new dimension to his compositions. All this necessitates the scale change of the viewer, that is, the constant shift of being close or distant to the image achieving the synthesis of the meaning and the delivery. Although the individual titles refer to the subject of the work (elite eater performer, big boss junior), the fragmentary composition essentially retains the mechanism of changing interpretation. The artist thus keeps away from formulating particular meanings.
Pop is the best word to describe the work of Zsolt Tibor stylistically. As the art of Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns is related to Dada and Surrealism, Tibor's art can be linked to the sixties? Pop art. Those took inspiration from the reality of their age, and then in their metaphors, they defined a direct iconic reference about the culture of their environment, might it be the alienation of a common motif, cultural-historical or actual press news. Zsolt Tibor's image building practice, sometimes inspired by romantic associations in his subjects, goes along with the Cubist collage and Dadaism, and sometimes places non-matching, different representations reminiscent of the surrealists. Besides, the seventies' self-reflexive (art about art) conceptual artistic tradition is also to discover on his papers.
The works made in recent years show an emphasis on the picturesqueness: the use of varied painting materials - spray, pastel, brush, - richer color and demonstration of the qualities of the materials all serve to take on the sensual painting quality. Despite his bonds, Tibor uses an autonomous artistic language; his works are fields for interpreting and modeling our present reality.
Zsolt TIBOR (1973, Budapest; lives and works in Vienna, Austria) is one of the most prominent, internationally recognized artist of his generation. He graduated from the Painting Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2002.In addition to several group exhibitions, he had solo exhibitions at the Trafó Gallery and VILTIN Gallery in Budapest, as well as at the Galerie Lukas Feichtner in Vienna. In 2016, he also had solo shows in Lisbon and Prague as an invited resident of SYNTAX and FUTURA. Previously he also participated in the residency program of Krinzinger Projekte (Vienna) and HIAP (Helsinki). In addition to the recognition of the STRABAG International Art Award (2009) and the Esterházy Art Award (2015), he earlier had received the Derkovits scholarship and the Klara Herczeg Award. His works are included in several private and public collections including the LUDWIG MUSEUM - Contemporary Art Museum Budapest, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Spanish Contemporary Graphic Museum and the New York Carousel Collection.
Tibor iSKI KOCSIS