A wicked dance under the trees
artist: SZABOLCS VERES

Veres Szabolcs’ new paintings guide us towards the very brink of portraiture; they set us within a dehumanized/disenchanted environment that depicts the degradation/decomposition/decay of the human figure. Yet, at the same time, the “déchirure” (Georges Bataille) of human form does not lead towards a kenotic emptying of inner substance of the figurative representation, but towards the expressive disclosure of a new sensuality.
Within this very sensuality, the human figure becomes fragmented. Far from being exposed to the whole of the human “figure” of classical esthetics, the viewer finds himself confronted with the torso - the living, yet phantasmal stump. However, the portraits convey more than just the dark dusk of humanity; anthropomorphic forms cohere and reconfigure themselves according to a grotesque order that brings out a carnivalesque geniality subtly contaminated by intimations of post-human melancholy. Suggestive more than descriptive, the main themes (of the artworks) aggregate in lacunary narratives, unfolding eerie hunt scenes or paranoid mountain trips.
In these paintings, hunting,far from being shown as an aristocratic sport endowed with esthetic overtones, is seen as a “dehumanizing” exercise: the sort of activity that reduces both the aggressive practitioner of this sport and its object to the status of mere matter.
Somehow, in this context, hunting is also an allegory of painting. The continuous chase of forms, their capture, their fragmentation and the subsequent dissipation they undergo are the fundamental landmarks pacing Veres’ creative process.
Concurrently, the hunt acquires the aspect of a feast, depicting a sacrificial rite that bestows life and allows the rebirth of a whole community. Thus, out of the very agony of forms, carnivalesque laughter is born, carrying the viewer way beyond the classic paradigm of beauty commingled with joy of life.
Veres’ distorted characters and laughing corpses are represented in vivid, intense hues –bearing witness, once more, to the fact that the distorted does not entail the tragic, that laughter is fully capable of integrating the horror with the ”plein air”.

Nemes Z. Márió
poet, aesthetician