Ádám Dóra: Cloud Walker
Artkartell projectspace
15 September – 7 October, 2022.
Curator: Gábor Rieder
Arkartell is happy to present the solo exhibition of Ádám Dóra: Cloud Walker. Dóra belongs to the youngest generation of Hungarian artists. In his latest series he painted monumentally oversized and infantile sneakers in front of fluffy cartoon clouds using abstractish patches and easy brushwork. Easy pop above the clouds.
In his lecture on art history Leonardo tells about the power of turbid shapes, such as fleecy clouds, where the imagination of the observer may recognize different forms. Ádám Dóra is not using the method of psychological projection. His painted clouds are not swirling randomly, but forming orderly blocks in a tilted, cartoonish style. Cumulus clouds floating like whipped cream cruisers. Their shapes are not formed by the laws of physics and aerodynamics, but by the spontaneously automatic and deliberately easened-up internal rules of the painter's shaping. In his latest works of 2022 these weightless white cloud fluffs give the background among elegant but easy pink, orange and peach color field surfaces. On these cheerful and bright celestial stages appear the grotesque forms of oversized sneakers: huge, bulgy rubbersoles, haphazard patterns of synthetic surfaces, cushioned parts, stabilizing bridges of artificial leather, winding shoelaces and cheerful bows. Of these massive blocks of sneakers only thin ankles are sticking out or maybe we can see the hems of trousers on the top of the painting. The owner of the shoes is always invisible, just like the human characters in the classic Tom & Jerry show, as if the wearer of the sneakers came from a different, higher sphere, a divine appearance through the clouds seen from our earthly frog perspective.
Ádám Dóra was always interested in the connection of urban environments and reducing abstraction, geometry and organic expression. Sneakers got his attention during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. Bright UV colors of the ‘80s combined with high-tech, distorted forms, these sneakers passed through the almost empty streets as otherworldly apparitions. The exhausting confinement of the lockdowns opened the way for comfortable leisure fashion which met extreme sneaker trends, where shoes mean much more than their comfortable predecessors and are often worn as a fashion statement. Ádám Dóra is not a fan and kept his distance from his object, watching sneaker culture and its sociological context with almost scientific curiosity. As he told while creating these series, the trends of the recent years were mixing evergreen colors and fitting with deliberately inaccurate and extreme designs and futuristic elements. This visual concept gives us the illusion of freedom but also reflects our current insecurity with ever more blurred boundaries. During the last couple of years comfort took over elegance but a new and characteristic aesthetic also appeared, fethisizing trash, ugly and disproportionate. The importance of brands and logos has come to new heights. In this new visual world order products are equipped with superhuman, almost divine characteristics. Ádám Dóra’s latest exhibition at Artkartell projectspace is following these lines, higher and higher, towards the sky where brutal soles and shoe designs are interacting with cartoon clouds, for the greater glory of easy pop.
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Ádám Dóra was born in Vác, Hungary, 1993. Ha graduated from the Budapest University of Fine Arts in 2017 but he has already had several solo and group exhibits. He was the youngest participant at the Esterházy Art Award exhibition in the Ludwig Museum in 2021 and then later some pieces of his latest series were also presented at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt, Austria. He was shortlisted for the STRABAG award in 2022. He lives and works in Budapest.
Sponsor: PP Center
