drMáriás: Tavasz-Tündér-Találkozó 2019-03-28 — 2019-05-04

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drMáriás

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Dr Máriás

Spring Fairy Meeting

An exhibition of the artist's latest paintings and prints by Vinczemill.

Opening: 2019 March 28 at 20 hours.

Opening: Dr Bárándy Péter, former Minister of Justice

At the opening, Peter Posta is holding a tasting of the wines from Pósta Borház.

The exhibition is open until 4 of May, from Tuesday to Friday between 9 and 14, and on Saturday between 10 and 13.

This year 20 the main element of the Godot Gallery’s festive programme is that the gallery will organise, in this jubilee year, a separate exhibition for each of its most important artists, where the latest works of each individual artist are shown to the public. We would like to draw attention to the fact that, while we speak of the living classics of contemporary art, these artists remain, up to the present day, continually creating exciting works that respond to the events surrounding them and to shifts in the visual‑art world.

In this series, the next is Dr Máriás, whose current introduction is already his fourth among the gallery walls.

A few words about the latest works: Because the creator weaves everything sad, terrible and bleak into something cheerful, vibrant, alive, thoughtful, critical, and distinctly ours, the three‑T‑inspired exhibition title does not recall the Forbidden‑Tolerated‑Supported cultural war but rather a genuine life‑lively Spring‑Fairy‑Encounter. For whether we are eternal naive optimists, lifelong melancholic devotees of life and freedom, smug agents of the West’s compulsory smiley cult, or caricatures of the Eastern martial‑arts societies’ imperial reverence, the aim is the same: to feel good in our own skin and to preserve our faces even in aimlessness. Dr Máriás’s newest images bring us the sprightly, life‑renewing atmosphere of spring, even though they speak about the world we live in. Where Stalin becomes a compassionate Brussels politician, Orbán a spring‑fairy, Soros rears Lőrinc Mészáros, Zoltán Mága rides a white horse, Tiborcz turns into a mirror‑egg, Lenin plays jazz trombone at Burger King, Mao smiles on a wall of tears, or capitalism violently murders communism—and we could keep listing. Of course we know that, because we see all of this, we talk of it, we cry, laugh, shout, it is lying in a corner or in the air above us, and the three‑T actually has a very real and contemporary existence, but this is one of the most important antidotes to that if we live, speak, create contrary to it the way we want.

drMáriás (1966, Újvidék), or rather Béla Máriás, practises genuine multidisciplinary art. His visual and musical activities began to unfurl simultaneously during his years at the University of Belgrade, accompanied by significant literary activity. In the works of the autodidact painter honesty and a kind of good‑natured uninhibitedness reign. Initially, punk and avant‑garde currents marked his art, which took a pronounced transcendent turn with the “Kivágatemberek” series, foregrounding the precarious uncertainty of existence. 1991‑year later, after moving to Hungary, he continued similar brightly‑stencilled paintings in a more figurative, expressive fashion. From the second half of the 2000s he shifts focus from the inner paths of the soul to the everyday world, exposing the gossiping side of consumer society and politics. His critical, sarcastic and provocative works on historical figures, ideologues, dictators and the politicians and celebrities of the recent and contemporary era present Central‑European life in the tension between an individual's sought freedom and societal marginalisation. The grotesque diction of his images not only elicits laughter but even more so jolts one into reflection with this peculiar visual diary, revealing what kind of world we live in today. In drMáriás’ eclecticism, the outward marks of Dada and naïve painting devoid of mastery interweave with American pop‑art and Russian szoc‑art styles.

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