László Szotyory: Cypresses and Aeroplanes

“We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to-be-acquired reality that would fill us and make us whole. We stood in front of a door we’d never seen before. The two of us alone, beneath a glimmer of light, our hands tightly clasped together for a fleeting ten seconds of time.” – Murakami Haruki

The title of László Szotyory’s exhibition, ‘Cypresses and Aeroplanes’, can be traced back to the artist’s two favoured themes: the Mediterranean landscape and vehicles. Nature and man, permanence and evolutionary movement, make his works intellectually layered. Szotyory is able to capture atmospheres with unsurpassed delicacy, his works burn themselves into our innermost worlds with gentle, melancholic-bucolic radiance. The images, formed from glazed, softly vibrant brushstrokes, often refer back to works from other notable artists, be it a painting inspired by Giorgio de Chirico or one by Jean-Antoine Watteau.

The artist endows objects seemingly lacking soul with a peculiar character, almost like animism. “I think the paintings depicting aeroplanes fit into the process of affection where these strange components – buildings, cypresses, cars and planes – become vivid creatures of the landscape making the scenery a bit ominous but, for me, exciting, mysterious and beautiful.” It is this kind of restrained, chaste beauty that captivates us too when we come across the paintings of László Szotyory: the citrusy freshness of freedom passes through the sweet serenity of preserved desire and charm, often in the form of a bright spot of colour or a flying aeroplane.