franyo aatoth & Kai Masayuki: masafranyoyuki

The Várfok Gallery is pleased to present the first event of the autumn season, where the works of aatoth franyo and Masayuki Kai will be displayed within the framework of a joint exhibition. The link between the Hungarian and the Japanese artists’ work is the critical examination of the relations between nature and humanity. In addition to this, Kai has made the Japanese translation to aatoth’s gap-filling book, entitled the Pocket Dictionary of the Travelling Barfly which has been translated to 14 languages and republished several times.

franyo aatoth

The art of franyo aatoth (1954, Mátészalka /H) doesn’t exactly fit to the categorical tendencies of the art history, however his latest paintings remind us to the dynamic brushwork of the Abstract Expressionism, and his ready-made objects recall Neo-Dada gestures. The artist is, and always has been strongly affected by the Asian culture and nature, yet his thirty-years long artistic career is full of persistent renewals. In his latest paintings the so-called ’aatoth-red’ gradually gives its place to the green and blue shades of the nature, just as the dominance of human figures getting replaced with the palm trees of the Thai jungle.

aatoth arrived to Paris in 1978 with the help of Victor Vasarely, where he completed his studies at the École Supèrieure des Beaux-Arts. Artworks of aatoth have been displayed all around the world from Budapest to Bangkok, and can be found in Hungarian, French, Mongolian, Cuban and many other public and private collections.

An additional homeland of franyo aatoth– beside Paris and Budapest – is Thailand for almost a decade, where he is working in an atelier built on the edge of the wild jungle. The superhuman strength of the rainforest, the honest spiritualism of the Buddhist monks living on the Thai-Burmese border; and opposite to these the western consumer society, the bulldozers of civilization, and the bitter smell of the burning bushes meet in aatoth franyo’s paintings. He is trying to call our attention to the conscious destruction of nature, and at the same time to rehabilitate this decay with his individual artistic gesture: he paints the original picture of a tree’s healthy, living organisation on an already damaged trunk, which has been saved from the burning forest. The motifs of a rainforest, the palm trees, scrub, and aquatic plants are turning into calligraphic signs on his expressively painted Thai landscapes. As Nature would try to talk to us, but its language is already indecipherable. The abstract landscapes, ready-made objects and the large-scale interactive installation of aatoth redefines the contrary relationship between Nature and civilized humanity. 

Kai Masayuki

Kai Masayuki (1958, Hiroshima), Japanese-born artist is active in France since 1976. He received his degree in 1981 in Marseille, then, between 1981-82 he attended the courses of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Art in Paris, where he is living and working nowadays. He had individual exhibitions among others in Tokyo, Osaka, Paris and Brussels, and his artworks are to be found in many European and Far East collections.

The art of Kai Masayuki is deeply rooted in the submissive approach and viewpoint of Nature’s elemental power. He defines not only himself, but the entire humanity as a part of this cosmic order. The works of Kai reflect to his spiritual way of thinking, as he believes that ground and soil are the most important references in human life. According to this philosophy he is interested in the relation of Earth and other planets as well.

He is using the four base elements of nature – fire, water, air and soil – as ’raw materials’ of his artworks. The art of Kai is also inspired by the specific motifs and mentality of Japanese culture. He uses a particular technique to create the artefacts: he digs pieces of canvases to the ground, waits until the material becomes fray, then sewing together again the remaining, eroded pieces of textile.  He compares the texture of these works to the surface of unearthly planets. Kai extends the unit of pre-nature to the infinity of the entire universe, because only this way can its boundary to the earthly time and space become visible.