These small-sized watercolours are my first impressions of my stay at the National Academy of Arts, Sofia. All of them were made in my studio during my erasmus program, and they picture the atmosphere and life in the atelier. Some of the paintings are more like a mesmeric, fictional image based on the place’s spirit.
Bánkúti Gergő
Installations
I came to you, because I love you - 2016
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
oil, canvas, bed and one of my grandmother’s drawing 190 x 65 x 95 cm
This work explores the parallel sides between life/maidenhood and death/womanhood as being a wife. The oil painting is my copy of my grandmother’s bridal present to my grandfather with the following text: ‘I came to you because I love you’. In Hungarian we use the same expression for the phrases ’came to you’ and ’marry to you’. Also there is a hyperrealistic bible and a rosary painted on the blanket which is used in funeral ceremonies.
’To whom got married after her twentieth year, they mocked: ’Old Maid’! I said I won’t be an ’Old Maid’ I will marry! Your grandfather came then I wed him. I didn’t even know him, we just meet at that time, still we lived sixty years together. […] I decided that I esteem the one who wed me. I can’t love someone who didn’t. Afterwards we lived together. We got used to and we came to love each other in the bed.’
(from a recording of Piroska Sándor, my grandmother)
I hope everything will be as it used to be - 2013
I hope everything will be as it used to be oil, school bench 120 x 72 x 65 cm
I hope everything will be as it used to be oil, school bench 120 x 72 x 65 cm
I hope everything will be as it used to be oil, school bench 120 x 72 x 65 cm
I hope everything will be as it used to be oil, school bench 120 x 72 x 65 cm
During the summer of 2013 I was in a Hungarian art-camp with my school. The place we lived in was an abandoned school building located in a small village. I have found an exercise book and an old school bench on the loft. I decided to paint a hyperrealistic image of the exercise book on the bench with the following text: ’I hope everything will be as it used to be”. The whole piece is about memories you don’t want to remember, although you can not forget.
I fear thee now (I fear you so) - 2013
site specific instalation paper and adhesive foil 11 x 1.40 meters
site specific instalation paper and adhesive foil 11 x 1.40 meters
site specific instalation paper and adhesive foil 11 x 1.40 meters
site specific instalation paper and adhesive foil 11 x 1.40 meters
site specific instalation paper and adhesive foil 11 x 1.40 meters
'EVE:
Adam, why hast thou stolen thus away?
So cold the last embrace thou gavest me;
And in thy face doth care or anger show,
I fear thee now.'
(from the last scene of Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man)
'The Tragedy of Man deals with universal human problems. This poetic drama follows the destiny of mankind from creation through stages of history into a future of a phalanstery (a Utopian commune) and the ultimate extinction of life. ' (www.britannica.com)
'Adam awakaned from his dream and guided by the (last) XIV scene’s horror, wants to escape to the final solution – the suicide. However Eve’s motherhood makes this act meaningless. […] The Tragedy of Man is the tragedy of the man who quits to the created world with the assistance of intellect. The final conclusion is the fall of the second world, the lost battle of humans against the nature. Even if this antithesis destroys both worlds. Though, the tragedy doesn’t question the task of the creator human (the will and the ratio) but coerces it between boundaries; the ambitions of humans cannot outstep the borders of nature’s and god’s law.' (István Sőtér – Béla G. Németh)
Laid table - 2012
oil, canvas, wood, grandmother’s old clothes 204 x 36.5 x 50 cm
oil, canvas, wood, grandmother’s old clothes 204 x 36.5 x 50 cm
oil, canvas, wood, grandmother’s old clothes 204 x 36.5 x 50 cm
oil, canvas, wood, grandmother’s old clothes 204 x 36.5 x 50 cm
oil, canvas, wood, grandmother’s old clothes 204 x 36.5 x 50 cm
oil, canvas, wood, grandmother’s old clothes 204 x 36.5 x 50 cm
I discovered a lot of old clothes and household textiles in my grandmother’s wardrobe what she didn’t want to use. I sewed them together with some old canvases I found in our village, thus I created a long textile. I painted three plates on the long material, and a little glass for pálinka (a traditional fruit brandy in the Carpathian Basin). Each plate stands for a dish and the glass at the beginning stands for the ’first dish’ like an aperitif. This work is connected to a personal image of a traditional Hungarian eating habit.
Make me the kind of person you want me to be. Amen oil, canvas 65 x 50 cm 2013
oil, canvas 48.5 x 43 cm 2013
oil, salver, chair-pillow 33 x 33 cm and 17 x 17 cm 2012