Dezső Kosztolányi has a very joyful poem, I dream of coloured inks, in which he enthuses: “Then I’d want inks of more colours, / a bronze and a and a silver, a green and a gold. / More I’d need, hundreds and thousands, / Still more to follow, a million or more: / burgundy and lilac, a muted grey, / chaste ones, some loving, some garish and loud“. (translated by Leslie A. Kery) And he goes on at length, and then it is worth reading the whole poem alongside the paintings in Barnabás Földesi’s exhibition East of Babel, because the same love of life is expressed in the text as in the paintings on display here.
When we are able to step away from the grey worries of everyday life and see that life is full of colour and joy. It is indeed the bliss of being present that Basho’s haiku says: “In Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo, I long for Kyoto. (translated by Jane Hirshfield), but Beck Zoli also has a line to this effect, which is sung: “I’ll paint green when the meadow is green, and I’ll paint the blue sky blue.”
It’s the kind of joy that comes when we can step away from our current torment and look at things from above. Then we also see that everything that will be has already been. Barnabas Földesi, as an artist, actually takes this position when he paints, looking at time and art history itself from a distance, seeing the big picture when he composes these vibrant and elemental paintings. It’s as if he sees and wants to see all periods and art historical styles at once, as if to say that although everything has already happened, nothing has actually passed. His gaze encompasses past and present, East and West, and from the different worlds, cycles and spheres he extracts the elements that excite him and then assembles them into a puzzle-like composition.
Földesi draws freely from the ages of art history as well as from the world of mass or pop culture. In his paintings we discover the simplicity and sophistication of geometric abstraction as well as the wild sensuality of gesture painting. The artist oscillates sensitively between composition and spontaneity, between cold deliberation and a warm, intuitive method of creation, and it is in fact the viewer’s emotional state that determines what becomes dominant within a given painting.
The painter creates dense compositions, both horizontally and vertically, and although white spots still appear in the earlier works of the series, the more mature canvases, following the vacui principle of horror, avoid any emptiness, the panels being maximally saturated. The gaze cannot rest, it is always wandering, always discovering new details. In fact, it is at the level of the visual that Földesi perceives the way in which the ages of art history are built upon each other, or the way in which our various past experiences are layered upon each other to form a dense and rich fabric in our minds. In fact, looking at these paintings, we can also think of the billboards on which the many posters are stacked, parts of them peeling off, the older ones appearing under the new ones, eventually creating a whole new visuality.
But for me, these paintings are most about the diversity and infinite richness of the world. Because our reality is so cavalcade-like, full of possibilities, colour and form, and full of details to be deciphered, details that I can only sense but not fully understand. Our present age has no handholds, no secure hold, no resting place where we can really relax and be comfortable, everything is in motion and in constant flux, which can also create fear and despair. Because the possibilities and choices are endless, you never know where you are going or if you are going in the right direction, if there is a path for you or if you have to wade through the jungle and find a new path. Surely there are moments when we feel lost in this vast diversity, just as we can get lost in the complexity of Erdesi’s paintings. Because we can look at these paintings as long as we like, we can always find new details to discover, gestures that offer sensual pleasures to the eye, or abstract elements that expand our field of association. The paintings do not contain a narrative, but in fact they contain all the stories, as we discover our own past or future stories among the elements stacked on top of each other.
And we may be shocked at first by the intensity, the layering, the vibrancy of the images, just as we may be shocked by the disorder of our world today. But in fact these images are still incredibly positive. They are not trying to make grand statements, they are paintings about joy, happiness and fun. They’re about how we can take life too seriously, but it doesn’t really make sense. Because it’s enough to be happy with what is and sometimes let yourself go with the flow, because then you can really immerse yourself in the diversity of the world.