Liberation Square V.05 Painting

Part 5 While Barakonyi also targets these components, it is not by subordinating them to the traditional visual language, but by using them to create new relationships between visual elements. With the help of monochrome bands and abstract forms, he erases and blurs the boundaries of individual objects. The foliage of trees blends with parts of architecture, shadows cast by vehicles or various reflections. The paintings are filled with a vibrant playon-forms created by the shadows that gather in the irregularities of building facades and the folds of clothing. Light is placed in the focus of these artworks, as it dissolves the contours of buildings and appropriates bits of bodies and objects – as it informs optical situations. Barakonyi has a keen sense for overwriting certain details in the photographs, altering the dominance of its portrayed figures, thereby subverting the hierarchy between different segments of composition. In a space divided into slices and blocks of colour, some objects disappear while others are accentuated by strongly contrasted juxtapositions. The photographed people of the street lose their facial features, their clothing is often indistinguishable, thereby becoming mere silhouettes – secondary parts of the visual plane. See next...