Adam Hollos: Discomfort

Adam Hollos, born in 1984 in Budapest, graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts Painting Department in 2011 and, in the same year, joined the artist’s circle of the Várfok Gallery.

The works of Adam Hollos are very much grounded in the reality of everyday life. He reinterprets moments and glimpses of city life. He analyses the scene, breaks down the various components and then carefully and methodically reconstructs the elements but with an altogether different quality. He poses questions, challenging the viewer and society at large. In Hollós’s latest works, a feeling of discomfort pervades the images. As the viewer encounters the painted scene, instinctive reactions are triggered which provoke a series of personal memories, thoughts and ideas. Hollos compresses a multitude of emotions into a single frame which then he allows viewers to unpick and unfold within themselves.

Adam Hollos admits that, during the creation of his latest works, he was under the spell of the colour purple whilst, at the same time, using electrically charged neon shades alongside simpler, earthy tones. Thus, he has created distinct contrasts within the internal environment of the picture itself. His distinctive painting technique becomes ever more sophisticated. The shapes at first seem figural but, on closer inspection, one can see them to be small, nonfigurative colour treatments with special paint effects which reduce the forms into a myriad of tiny units. The narrative of the work is essential but, in parallel, the creative layers of creation are also fundamental and serve to show how Hollos continues to seek for new techniques of applying paint to the surface of the work. And, it is no coincidence that wooden boards rather than canvas form the solid background for his artworks. Here are echoes of the grand old masters, works solidly crafted in a historical tradition whilst being very much a contemporary comment on today’s world.