Imre Bak's exhibition opening at Vaszary Gallery

Imre Bak: Situations

Works 2004-2022

Vaszary Gallery, Balatonfüred

Imre Bak is one of the most important artists of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde, and his oeuvre is defined almost from the beginning by geometric imagery based on hard edge painting. Step by step Bak re-frames and reinterprets his painting, which unfolds as a coherent train of thought, in the context of post painterly abstraction in the sixties, conceptual art in the seventies and later a postmodernist imagery. Since the 2000s, Bak's geometric painting has been increasingly influenced by impulses from digital visuals and post-media imagery. For the first time, the exhibition at Vaszary Gallery looks at Imre Bak's series created between 2004 and 2022, showing the evolution of his oeuvre. Each section of the exhibition focuses on the main groups of works from the newer phases of the oeuvre, showing how geometric abstraction and figurative associations are returning to Bak's art, how the newer works are characterised by the duality of hard edge painting and digital allusions and the sensual vibrancy of metaphysical spaces, and how Bak is rethinking the traditions of (geometric) painting and his own motif set. Imre Bak's art has recently attracted considerable international attention: his paintings have recently been included in the collections of the Tate in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and his work has been the subject of important overviews in István Hajdu's monograph (2003) and the Paks Gallery's Timely Timelessness. However, no overview of the most recent periods of his oeuvre (since the publication of the 2003 monograph) has been published. The Balatonfüred exhibition aims to fill this gap. The title of the exhibition evokes the ambiguous title of the image often used by the artist in recent years, which refers to the situation of forms, the new constellations that emerge in the (re)development of his oeuvre, and the existential situations that motivate change.

Curator: Dávid Fehér