BalAzs Mucsi

The art defined

My paintings usually try to address universal problems and questions that go beyond the personal. I believe that humour and a grotesque vision can be an important element in interpreting them.

The deep-sea world and space appear in my works as humanity’s trash cans. Strange, rusty structures, peculiar, degenerated plants and animals, and surreal images created from their fusion. Through these, I try to allegorically represent those now undesirable phenomena that humans have caused for themselves, yet still try to hide. In line with this, technological development, overproduction, environmental pollution, and consumer society are frequent themes in my paintings and drawings. As I mentioned earlier, the themes are universal, but my relationship with them is very personal, as it’s impossible to curb these issues by shifting the responsibility onto the larger community; it must be done on an individual level.

Inspired by Warhol

Andy Warhol’s paintings brought me closer to the artist’s vision.

He is a true cult figure of the Pop Art style and I sympathise with the way his paintings often express his social sensitivity through the curved mirror he shows to mass production. It is a fascinating effect that the advertising value of the product he depicts is not diminished by the curved mirror, and may even increase. In modern everyday life we are exposed to visual stimuli beyond our ability to interpret, so as visual artists it is particularly important to act as a filter for these.

Perhaps what we have in common is that I myself choose the simplest, most ordinary objects as my subject matter, using the tools of surrealism.

Although I share Andy Warhol’s approach to social criticism, I think that the changes that have taken place since his time require a more raw artistic approach.

Another Fauna

Andy Warhol was renowned for his artistic depiction of everyday objects, but some of his works also included abstract elements, particularly to represent symbols of life and society. My painting, with its grotesque plant forms and surreal shapes, is reminiscent of Warhol’s pop art influence and creative playfulness, which also appeared in the Absolut Vodka campaign.

My work for The Other Half exhibition reveals a surreal, organic world of distorted shapes and strange creatures. The blues and pinks create a dreamlike atmosphere that highlights the deformed, twisting shapes. These shapes resemble part plant, part strange creature, as if part of a process of transformation. The various branches and cocoon-like elements suggest motifs of metamorphosis and change, as if something new is being born in a grotesque interpretation of nature.

The forms are strangely distorted, as if we were in a world where the laws of nature do not prevail and the boundaries between the living and the inanimate are blurred.

The painting as a whole is reminiscent of surrealism, where elements familiar from reality appear abstract and abstract. The organic shapes and colour contrasts present a world dominated by transformation and deformation, in a kind of abstract, dream-like space that both makes you think and calms you down.