"I paint, he makes models. He designs sets, I do fine art. These are very different things and of course very similar. We've both had several exhibitions, but this will be the first time we'll be showing our work in the same space."

 

/Dorottya Szabó (1975) and Levente Bagossy (1968), artist couple, on their first exhibition together/

 

They both graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Dorottya Szabó in painting and Levente Bagossy in graphic design, as well as set and costume design. Although they work in different fields and media, their work shares a common, dominant motif: the sophisticated depiction of intimate micro-worlds. While Szabó's surreal, dream-like imagery draws on personal experiences of everyday life, Bagossy's "doll house"-like miniature worlds are brought to life as the sets of plays in theatre. Their first joint exhibition at Einspach Fine Art & Photography gives a comprehensive overview of their oeuvres.

 

Dorottya Szabó's peculiar pictorial world unfolds from her emblematic, reduced motifs in her painterly layers, which are built on each other and sometimes made even more subtle by the artist's characteristic raster grids and sewing. In her icon-like compositions, composed of elements reminiscent of paper cut-outs, everyday objects take on new meaning, radiating a kind of timelessness. Transposed, reduced forms become personal symbols, mysterious visual embodiments of memories. Her paintings, although they depict intangible, not specific objects, are nonetheless based on very specific images. For the artist, a decorative element of a building in Budapest, a plaster sculpture of a fountain, a potted plant are just an excuse to think about the world through the language of painting. Her vision and her commitment to painting unite these images into a coherent world. The exhibition presents a selection of her works from the last 20 years, some of which has never been exhibited before. Dorottya Szabó received the Derkovits scholarship between 2001 and 2003, the DAAD scholarship between 2001 and 2002, and she was a fellow of the Hungarian Academy in Rome in 2003. In 2005 she was awarded the STRABAG Artaward International, in 2006 the Strabag SE scholarship in Vienna, and in 2012 the scholarship of Budapest Gallery. She is currently a fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.

 

Levente Bagossy is a poster and set designer for several theatres in Budapest and the countryside, as well as the designer-editor of the theatre magazine Ellenfény. His first sets were created for the former theatre of Pécs, but he also worked for theatres in Kecskemét, Szeged and Nyíregyháza. His best-known works are associated with the Katona József Theatre, the Örkény Theatre and the Radnóti Theatre in Budapest. In 1996, he won the Best Set Design Award at the National Theatre Festival for his set design for Leonce and Lena, in 1997 the Theatre Critics' Prize and in 2008 the Jászai Mari Prize. The sets for the Katona production of Ledarálnakeltűntem and the Radnóti production of Asztalizene have also won numerous awards. The exhibition aims to give a comprehensive overview of Bagossy's unique oeuvre by presenting emblematic set designs of the past decades. For many years, the artist has been creating his models not only for the theatre but also as independent artworks, combining the genres of set design and fine art in a unique way.

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Viktória Popper