Gagyi Botond
Tirgu-Mures, Mures, Romania
About Gagyi Botond
My name is Gagyi Botond, I'm from Romania. I was studying arts at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, at Painting department, License and Masters degree.
Artistic Statement:
The social network gives us access to a great range of images taken by various professional photographers and amateur users. These photos reflect ordinary people in ordinary life situations placed in an ordinary environment. Sometimes it’s just the clothing, the object or the relation between two people that intrigues me; so I crop these out and use this ”collage” that I get as a starting point or a base for my composition. This way you can see social reality playing on the canvas which is interrupted by a scale of colours, helping the whole picture become a new artificial reality.
Nowadays the concept of contemporary image is widely open when it comes to realistic representation. That is the reason why it can wary from mainstream to highly personalized. For instance, when the central motif of an image is a portrait it can easily become a stereotypical subject, just a copied face, but it can also be a way to express something special or unusual which normally wouldn't be expressed by mainstream language. The most pseudo-overrated subjects are always the mood driven rationales and the emotional gestures to express some kind of feeling. My visual language has a deeply subjective tone.
Generally one cannot know what the next idea or composition will be. I, personally, am not really keen on finding out too early these aspects, because I like to meditate on them and let them evolve on their own. The artwork represents a poetic visualization that is different from a romantic landscape, rather it’s an imaginary and artificial setting. Taking details from different images, leaving their initial context is an essential process to make them synthetic as decontextualized forms placed in an a-temporal space. I use these visual ingredients to generate tension between compositional elements and their immediate surroundings, just as a DJ uses existing elements to compose a brand-new sound.
The result is a mixtum compositum in which the real compositional elements are surmounted by the meta-real elements. The process reflects my primary interest in colour, transparency, materiality, contrast, composition, figurative, abstract, texture and gesture.
Education:
2015- 2017- Masters degree with Magna Cum Laude, Painting Departement, University of Art and Design, Cluj Napoca, Romania
2012-2015- BA with Magna Cum Laude, Painting Departement, University of Art and Design, Cluj Napoca, Romania
2008 – 2012- Fine Arts High school, Painting department, Tîrgu-Mureş, Romania qualification certificate- technician for artistic techniques, visual arts profile
Exhibitions:
Solo exhibitions:
2015- Solo exhibition, Artful Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2017- Splinter, Galeria Casa Matei, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2017- GameZone, Expomaraton, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Group exhibitions:
2010- Charitable painting exhibition,Târgu-Mureş, Romania
2010- Exhibition in the House of Bernady Gyorgy, Târgu-Mureş, Romania
2011- Art Nouveu in the town, Painting exhibition, Târgu Mureş, Romania
2013- The Crivellis new read, Monte San Martino, Italy
2015- Art in the Park Painting, University of Art and Design, Painting department, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2015- Graduate Students of University of Art and Design Exhibiton, Expo Transilvania Exhibition Center, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2016- Group exhibition, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland
2016- Art Safari Bucharest, Focus Art Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
2016- Group exhibition, Gara Mica Group, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2016- National Student Festival- Vizualia (University of Art and Design from Cluj-Napoca), Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2017- Painting / Now, Group exhibition, University of Arts and Design in colaboration with Museum Complex from Bistrița-Năsăud, Bistrița-Năsăud, Romania
2017- Graduate Students of University of Art and Design Exhibiton, Masters degree, Expo Transilvania Exhibition Center, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2017- Ending session, Urania Palace, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2017- Art in the Park Painting, University of Art and Design, Painting department, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
