István Nyári

Virág Judit Gallery held an exhibition showcasing the artwork from the past 30 years of the legendary painter, István Nyári. As the London-based artist has not had an exclusive exhibition in Hungary, his home country, for a couple of years, the 2012 exhibition celebrated the  60-year-old Nyári for multiple reasons, featuring such cult works as T.M.T.H’s Madonna, In the museum before closing or Killer scene beside some of his very recent items.

With cyborgs riding a bike, androids dreaming of electric sheep, plastic dolls taking a bubble bath and robotic dogs running around happily having received a new heart, Nyári’s futuristic visions transport us to post-human times. His compositions use kitsch-like elements and draw inspiration from Japanese anime, cult sci-fi stories and fantasy fiction. His pictures usually feature familiar characters which bear multiple layers of meaning as they do not only reflect themselves, but also refer to the cultural environment and era that evoked them. Nyári’s paintings always reveal the date of their origin as they accurately depict the current phenomena of the world of television, movies, subculture and underground from the late 20th century and the early 21st century. After all, Nyári is an outright chronicler of the age, who perceives the world soberly in its own madness.

The human figures he portrays always play an important role in carrying meaning. His allegoric human figures, usually taken from motion pictures or mythology are sometimes replaced by real flesh and bone characters from his life. The theme of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom, for example, has been used by various pieces of art in numerous manifestations depending on the prevailing trends. Nyári was also influenced by this motif, taking a photographic portrait of one of his friend’s son to replace the characteristic arrow feature of traditional St. Sebastian representations with tacks, and pained expression with proud posture and Zoolander-like look to create his famous painting called St. Sebastian makes Zoolander’s incredible Magnum face.

Thanks to TIF and JPEG images, PS and ID, Nyári’s paintings provide a picture of reality so clear that it is even more precise than visible reality. His technocrat compositions are built up pixel by pixel according to a precisely-developed plan, with everything being enlarged and worked out to the minutest detail. Even reality itself does not normally represent objects so closely and accurately. As a result, the subjectively-linked elements of reality will create more surreal pictures. Nyári compresses, condenses and multiplies the themes of his pictures, and amplifies them to a state of madness, where the seemingly incredibly unrelated elements suddenly start communicating with each other to create a unique language, a hallmark of Nyári, which reaches far beyond our boldest dreams.