Painter Creates New Worlds Out of Fossils From the Now

November 18, 2015, 4:45pm

Space, sports cars, and spy planes all make appearances in the seemingly stream-of-consciousness-styled paintings of young artist Botond Keresztesi, a Romania-born Hungarian University of Fine Arts graduate now working out of Budapest. Currently at Horizont Gallery, Keresztesi’s acrylic on canvas works feature in a new show titled RGB – Roman, Gothic, Baroque, a nod to both the art history which they cull from and the digital future towards which they look.

“What intent was guiding the artist in mixing such mundane objects and phenomena with figures of history? Is Keresztesi trying to criticize mass-produced products, cultural heritage, or technology?” Horizont asks of the 1m x 1m paintings. “Keresztesi’s works point at the very incoherence of contemporary art itself. Today, art indeed can look just like anything. Keresztesi’s work, therefore, qualifies as situation report rather than criticism, however, it makes us question our very own habit of looking at the past. As clear and comprehensible it may seem, was our past really coherent? Or is it only when looked at from the chaos of today, that our history seems to have direction?” Whatever your interpretation, you have to admit: anything is possible in the world of Botond Keresztesi.