“Even a fallen petal makes sense.”


I am looking for the meaning of life in a world where war, homicide and conspiracies are commonplace. I pay attention to the linking points between people. How we behave with each other. How tension evolves and how it relieves. To dissolve tension caused by our coded and learnt patterns, we often need a third party (e.g. God, a family member, a dog …).

I mould my philosophy into visual form in such a way that I consciously give up using various painting tools in order to focus solely on the gist. Therefore the figures in my pictures are plain-like, unshaded, I rarely apply 3D effects in the background and even if I do so, they are only indicative. The emphasis is on the figures’ movements, on simplified colour-usage, on the choice and application of different materials. The strong outlines of shapes act as cohesive frames of our selves. What fills these frames? Everything we live through, we got from our parents and their parents, we consume as nutrition, our thoughts, desires. We are the encounters of the material and the spiritual world. Everyone is a microcosm. Part of a bigger whole.

The true meaning of my art was being clarified throughout the conversations with my friends.  My pictures grasp commonplace movements, yet those ones that are deeply embedded in human existence, and which can trigger a series of associations in the recipient. During creation I keep in mind these association options offered to the recipient; from these I restrict the space of my works, quasi “stiffening” it to become essential. My works are thought-extracts because it takes a long time from planning to design. Therefore only those works are finally made, which stand the test of time and are up-to-date.

The pictures are very personal (Cotton candy life series). I do not create through the viewer’s eyes. My aim is that the thoughts, which appear visually in my pictures, which come from the same root, and which are fed by our common old events and experiences, take the spectator to a time travel, back to childhood. I do refer in the titles (Contra-Body-Scene), but not didactically. It will never mean the same for them as for me; however childlike purity is there in everyone, we only have to be able to call it forth in order to make my pictures perceptible and sensible. Being a child while we know that we are already adults, is a good thing.

If we dig deeper into the reality of child-existence, we have to realize, there is practically everything in it; intrigue, hatred, exclusion, hostility and abjection, purely everything, which represents the seamy side of belief in human goodness (When a child was a child series). I am optimistic, still I am aware of the fact that good only prevails in presence of bad. Contrasts play an important role in my pictures, e.g. in Contra-Body-Scene series or in Draw yourself 2-3 pictures. A child is also a human; there is everything in them as in an adult with the difference that they are perfect. They are just learning how to fit in the society, what compromises they have to make, how to get on, to learn the hang of intrigues, learn to hate, lie, steal, kill, and humiliate.

In everyday life I see and also experience how children do things with such devotion. They are enthusiastic, ready to act, they can hardly wait to utter their thoughts, feelings. They do not do this in speech but often in pictures, drawings, paintings, through dancing, singing, playing (Draw yourself). From most of them this interest is killed by the adults, thanks to their selfishness, impatience, weakness and inability. They had learnt the same. Certainly, there are many, who can preserve their childish selves, Homo Ludens keeps living in them, are sympathetic to them and take them as fellow-beings.

The realization of my pictures is actually due to cooperation. Collages are made mostly by materials (rubbish) useless to others. They are mainly paper-based. The surfaces of my figures are filled with children’s drawings. Namely for my first such picture I used up my eldest daughter’s old divinity notebook. We collected in our flat the newspapers and notebooks intended to throw out. When I found this notebook (because during a selection you always find something precious, just like this time), I looked into it and was stunned reading a 3rd grader girl’s thoughts. Their task was to write a psalm. She wrote the following: Be my sister blest for she is an autist. For she has to behave well at school and her teachers’ have to pay attention to her. Give her happiness in her full ages, as well. It is merely thought-provoking where this kind of sensitivity, love, empathy disappears from most of us. After this I started collecting my autist daughter’s scribble drawings and built up in my pictures. From then on our cooperation is continuous.

Ágoston Lóránt