István Kulinyi’s exhibition

November 4 – December 4, 2005

What strikes the viewer as truly odd in István Kulinyi’s works, ones that employ, among other things, the motifs of classical or historical artworks, must derive from the variety of origins: he renders fantastic elements in classic picture types and forms, treats subjects and representations with the boldness of an applied graphic artist, dazzles his viewer with incredible combinations. Diverse in technique, Kulinyi’s works further expand our universe, bloating as it is on the line between the possible and the impossible. This computer alchemist, this white magician of Photoshop offers mysterious scenes, interesting figures and enigmatic locales: so many opaque, enigmatic paraphrases.
This exhibition is a thought experiment: the artist reconsidered his own youthful graphics of several decades ago, and developed them with the use of different techniques and artistic media.
“The experiences, intuitions, realizations and miracles which one lives through, understands or formulates for oneself in one’s twenties will go on to function as building blocks that determine the rest of one’s life. What was so definitive for me in the seventies, a time marked by the isolation of the country, was the beginning of the space age, the landing on the Moon, the opening of endless space. I made one-line ink drawings under their spell, only to step beyond them later on. I came across them many years later, and I made an experiment: I relived them with my older ego, I painted them on. It was then natural to return to them after a similar amount of time had passed, in an age of Hubble telescope images and digital technology, to work on them with the tools I now have at my disposal..” (I.K.)