Erika Deak Gallery, Budapest, 17/11/2016-14/01/2017
Levente Baranyai is primarily interested in the landscape, mostly the landscape inhibited and created by people but depicted without them. He depicts this landscape from a bird's eye-view. This perspective shows not only the unrepeatableness and uniqeness of it, but also its vulnerabilty.
He often uses already manipulated satelite photographs to create his paintings heavily burdened by oil paint. With the help of this scenic painting technique he creates shockingly real and astonishing works of art. He lays on colors with a painting knife. Standing close to them, they falls apart into abstract dashes of colors and paint textures, while when observing them from the right distance, the traces and peculiar shapes become clear. These paintings with the amazing amount of material expand into the space like an embossment.
We can't apart from the fact that Baranyai's paintings have a social mission as well. The works painted after manipulated aerial photogaphs are cultural objects, what reflects on different social phenomena to give information about the society and age they were made in.
He works on his newest series, entitled National Land Art, for two years now. In the focus of the new paintings are the sometimes fictional, sometimes real birdviews of Budapest. Baranyai questions that fact, that our prevailing government builts more athletic stadions instead of spending money more reasonably. The subject might appear local at first, but Baranyai also points a more global question, that how and with what form could a political power redrafts a view of a city. His ironical and detached opinion is clearly articulated in the titles of his recent works.Â