Working With My Body / Solo Show at Einspach Fine Art & Photography
Einspach Fine Art & Photography
16 November 2023 – 14 December 2023
Opening speech by Róbert Alföldi
_
Text by Viktória Popper & Emese Boglárka Nagy
Photo credits: Richard Kreammer, Brúnó Einspach
And the enjoyment of the fine arts is slowly becoming more important than the enjoyment of all the other, so to speak, opportunities life has to offer. Yet nowadays I often feel embarrassed because I cannot follow what I see and perceive in this field. I understand all too well that in this changing world, in this world that is difficult to keep up with, that old techniques, approaches, communications, etc. etc. etc. are changing. And I keep looking, seriously, open mindedly and inquisitively and I realize that I am left out of the whole party. And it's not so good to enjoy it alone. (Well, maybe as the years go by, one becomes more conservative, nota bene more limited, I admit that, but still... I consider myself an open- minded, curious, so to speak, culture-consuming person...)
This introduction – which may have made you smile – is just to explain why I love Ádám Dóra's paintings from this point of view as well. Because he paints. In the most concrete, free and wild sense of the word. And it feels so good to me, as a culture-consuming person interested in fine art. He doesn't just happen to paint because he has nothing better to do, has no better idea, but because he wants to paint. And from this very strong and visible and perceptible inner desire and strength and passion, I also feel a strong inner passion, a good mood, strength and I dare to risk it, joy. And we are already together, he who paints, I who watches, and to use the previous, perhaps somewhat piquant words, we enjoy it together. We enjoy that he paints.
Perhaps it is this inner creative order and real message – or how shall I say it – that makes Ádám's paintings devoid of „trifles”, even if there are many things in his paintings. What I call a „trifle” is when a picture, or any work, cannot stand still, cannot relax, cannot really exist in itself, because all sorts of things are tacked on it, because there is confusion of intention, because there is looking for things in a bad sense, because there is no inner order or direction in the creator.
Ádám has order in this sense. No shaking hands, no shaking direction. Lines, curves, colours, shapes, coloured or even white surfaces go forward forcefully. There is an inner, very strong compass, either in the head or in the soul. And yet we do not see a constructed, fake world, we do not see an artificial world, the instinct, the moment, the visceral is not eaten up by thought, by intention. It is consciously instinctive and instinctively conscious at the same time. I like it very much, because it contains the primordial, inexplicable artistic, so to speak, talent, but it also contains the work, it contains the professionalism, it contains everything that a man, an artist, can pick up and learn from his craft, so that he can then create, in this case paint, with even more freedom and joy. Joy! Adam paints with joy and these pictures are a reflection of that, in both large and small sizes. Perhaps this is authenticity. Ádám Dóra is an authentic painter. No, I don't say it like that, he is an authentic artist. And to return a little to the introduction, perhaps that is the point. Everything else is secondary, technique, form etc., etc., even the changing world. Because the inner self-identical world is the point. And because of that, it may be irrelevant where one goes, with what. The point is to not to lose this inner, personal, real basic position.
Okay, I definitely have to talk about the shoes, the sneakers. I don't think that this has much more significance than someone finding a motif and starting to twist and turn and examine and dismantle it. And here I specifically mean dismantling. Slowly, the shoes are completely dismantled and the whole painterly world begins to evolve into a beautiful new world that is free from all concreteness, wild, but at the same time not chaotic.
The pictures shown here are, in my opinion, the furthest along this path in the oeuvre, and I'm glad to see them going forward on this journey. Indeed, if you look at the two large pictures painted in Spain - to my left - and look at the pictures of the Austrian mountain solitude, you can see exactly this path, to say the least, of progress. Ádám Dóra is moving, searching, going forward on a path that he knows exactly. I am not sure that he knows where he is going. But it is also authentic that, despite his young age and already having quite a cool career, to say the least, he has an exhibition here at Einspach, which is quite cool, and this is not a compulsory schmoozing towards the host, but a fact, so to speak, so he has found something, and yet he does not rest, does not start mass production with the sure thing, but consistently forges his own path forward. I say again, I am very excited to see where he goes from here.
One word can make a hundred, or the other way round, a hundred can make one, Ádám's images exist unquestionably. They are unquestionable and authentic in this scene called fine art. Or in this world. In this confused reality. But they exist, in their own right. And authentically. And that is something.
And, I would also like to say, with some envy in my voice, that this painter we talk about, Ádám Dóra usually wears pretty good shoes!
Róbert Alföldi