Written by Kovács Ágnes     

Translated by Zoltán Bartko

MaJel Rovás Centre, Alžbetina 42 Košice, Slovakia

15 November 2018 - 10 December 2018

At the FiguratiF Gallery of the MaJel Rovás Centre, an exhibition of painter Imre Makai from Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary has opened. The exhibition is available to the public until 10 December 2018 at Alžbetina 42.

The works are full of action and also strive to find balance, while having a delicate, lyric atmosphere.

His way of painting is not traditional at all; the influences forming his artistic world are evident, though his individual character is predominant. He′s always capable of implying more than a simple image.

As it is evident from his paintings, the artist is also concerned with the past and depiction; fragmentation and blur show the passing time. The motives used in his paintings come from his surroundings, his creativity fills his characters with life.

His landscapes and cityscapes are fabular. However, there are no complex movement formulas, as in the lines of classical painting and he leaves much more space to the fantasies of the viewer. In case of some paintings, his free, or even rhapsodic, playful brushstrokes make his paintings dynamic and active.

Usually, he uses colours boldly and can make his viewers accept his harsh pink colours, finding the very delicate balance between the colours. In other cases, he builds his composition on contrasts.

In his painting entitled In the Park, we see an efficient mix of warm and cold colours, in the style of the Impressionists, so it seems that the impressions by Chagall did not leave him untouched.

Starting with the 2010s, his colours change and he shifts towards a more abstract concept. His characters are formed in a free fashion; he does not let himself be bound by the conventions. Recently, he has returned to the initial, less harsh colour palette resembling the artists coming from the Hungarian lowland. His colour choices are more mature, conscious - one may say, he is more moderate. Nevertheless, we can′t say he turned back on his way. Not at all. It is rather a clearer, more fruitful application of his past experience, leading the viewer to try to get into the particularities of the content and to the ranges of emotions, mysticism and abstraction, beyond the content. Thus, into the artists own, individual world.