Dungeon Keepers
Cracow, 17.06.2023 - 30.07. 2023
A joint Polish-Hungarian exhibition by two friendly artists will be their first show in Krakow. The space of the Piana gallery on Wrocławska Street will be transformed into a multi-threaded, narrative environment that will bring together important themes in the work of these two artists.
Botonda Keresztesi and Stach Szumski's exhibition takes the form of a mine map on which we follow images entangled in a dense network of tunnels of associations. In their author's mine shaft, the sedimentation of geological layers is intertwined with anthropological clues. layers of historical human activity can be read from the images - through objects from the most diverse cultures and areas melted into morphic minerals.
In his paintings, Botond Keresztesi creates an uncanny, surreal reality that transports the viewer to an overesthetized utopia. The world in his paintings is dreamy and surreal, quotes from art history are combined with characters from children's fairy tales, pop culture aesthetics are transformed through editing.
In Stach Szumski's work is multifaceted, through conceptual-interactive activities, in which he critically examines the aesthetics of First World countries washed out of folklore, to purely intuitive, visual practices. He creates emotional, narrative paintings that gleefully delight in everything they find in their path. A whole gallery of subjects from the trash of pop culture, advertising and the plastic bazaar overflows through his canvases, notebooks and murals. Szumski is not concerned with stigmatizing or exposing the licentiousness of the visual stream around him. By examining various subjects, themes and characters with his paintings, dissecting them, he also discovers among the trash the sources of the power that drives his art.
The exhibition is accompanied by an interview conducted with the artists by Piotr Sikora.
Botond Keresztesi
(b. 1987, Romania) is a Budapest-based artist working in painting, drawing and installation. Combining references to art history, popular culture, everyday life and the digital, his paintings crystallize into fragmented realities of dreamscapes. Recent solo and group exhibitions have included: Galerie Deroullion, Paris; Carl Kostyal, Malmo; Future Gallery, Berlin; Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest; and Schloss, Oslo.
Stach Szumski
b. 1992, Gdansk. Visual artist. Graduated from the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He works in painting and also creates installations, sculptures, prints, drawings and murals in public space. As he says, he owes his visual education mainly to grassroots practices related to post-graffiti. Since 2015, he has co-founded the Nomadic State project with Karolina Mełnicka - an art collective and fictional nomadic microstate. The fodder of his work is the visual messages of late capitalism and the side effects of globalization. He carries out his work - both large-scale wall paintings and interdisciplinary projects based on local research - during, and as a result of, numerous
Botonda Keresztesi and Stach Szumski's exhibition takes the form of a mine map on which we follow images entangled in a dense network of tunnels of associations. In their author's mine shaft, the sedimentation of geological layers is intertwined with anthropological clues. layers of historical human activity can be read from the images - through objects from the most diverse cultures and areas melted into morphic minerals.
In his paintings, Botond Keresztesi creates an uncanny, surreal reality that transports the viewer to an overesthetized utopia. The world in his paintings is dreamy and surreal, quotes from art history are combined with characters from children's fairy tales, pop culture aesthetics are transformed through editing.
In Stach Szumski's work is multifaceted, through conceptual-interactive activities, in which he critically examines the aesthetics of First World countries washed out of folklore, to purely intuitive, visual practices. He creates emotional, narrative paintings that gleefully delight in everything they find in their path. A whole gallery of subjects from the trash of pop culture, advertising and the plastic bazaar overflows through his canvases, notebooks and murals. Szumski is not concerned with stigmatizing or exposing the licentiousness of the visual stream around him. By examining various subjects, themes and characters with his paintings, dissecting them, he also discovers among the trash the sources of the power that drives his art.
The exhibition is accompanied by an interview conducted with the artists by Piotr Sikora.
Botond Keresztesi
(b. 1987, Romania) is a Budapest-based artist working in painting, drawing and installation. Combining references to art history, popular culture, everyday life and the digital, his paintings crystallize into fragmented realities of dreamscapes. Recent solo and group exhibitions have included: Galerie Deroullion, Paris; Carl Kostyal, Malmo; Future Gallery, Berlin; Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest; and Schloss, Oslo.
Stach Szumski
b. 1992, Gdansk. Visual artist. Graduated from the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He works in painting and also creates installations, sculptures, prints, drawings and murals in public space. As he says, he owes his visual education mainly to grassroots practices related to post-graffiti. Since 2015, he has co-founded the Nomadic State project with Karolina Mełnicka - an art collective and fictional nomadic microstate. The fodder of his work is the visual messages of late capitalism and the side effects of globalization. He carries out his work - both large-scale wall paintings and interdisciplinary projects based on local research - during, and as a result of, numerous
