Ákos Birkás: (freedom struggle)

23 January –   22 March 2014. 

Opening: 23. January, 7. p.m.

Opening Speech: Ádám Takács

Ákos Birkás presents in his latest paintings the figures in intimate scenes. By the technique of spot-glaze and warm tones he evokes the world of emotions and engrossment. Creating the backround by abstract painting-solutions, he reaches these gentle figures became parts of structures, beyond the individual´s existence. Therefore he evokes the connections of the landscapes of romanticism and the classical avangarde at the same time and so the historical approaches became lately relevant again.

A need appeared for the right of validating and reconstructing the philosophical thinking and its relevance in contemporary times,

paralelly with the traditions of painting.

But at the same time, for reforming the traditions of painting he reflects with irony, as he places the scenes only in the middle, therefore the painting itself became just a spot on the canvas. As a result of it, it doesn´t offer a complete illusion, as TV the screen, or the movie, that also doesn´t let its viewer dissolving in its reality.

Even though the emotional charging of these scenes - that are based on press-photos, keeping the typical compositional and appearance patterns - are really intense, painted with subconscious and poetical alterations.

The topics of the paintings refer always to personal relationships among a group or a couple.

Ákos Birkás summarizes its backround as the following: ´In hard times, when a society has to contrive in difficult situations for long years, these relationships have more important values and the possibilities of the individual expressing the sovereignity and the possiblities for the emancipation.

Those who undertake their intellectual or emotional self-dependence became into minority, and as the minorities in general: have to fight for their freedom and for their possibilities to live.

The famous feminist sentence: „Personal is political“ has its validity these days as well, because just „finding ourselves“ and being self-reflexive could be the only basis for struggling for freedom, but it has to start with sensibility. Sensibility, in the sense of being an alternative against the power and taking the risk of getting hurt.

There are similar strories in connection with  saints and the paintings with their characters from different epochs, that are exhibited in museums today. They appear on the canvas as gentle, not dominant, but dynamical and critical persons, concerning themselves, in an intellectual sense as well.

Erzsébet Pilinger

They present determinant concepts by these features, that characteriize in their coetaneous positions as well.