TAT Contemporary Art Gallery
Ioan Andrei Hegedus’s last solo exhibition, which took place in Szeged, got the remarkably apt title Nem itteni tájak (Not Local Scenery), which – as he divulged – does not only refer to the natural beauty of Iceland’s remote landscapes, the source of inspiration, but also to Bauhaus artist and teacher Johannes Itten’s name, who is widely known mainly for his book on chromatics. And although, in his pictures, there are rather surprising color-combinations to be seen, which might really not fit among the color-chords most preferred by the theoreticians of the early 20th century, Hegedus’s paintings are still undoubtedly harmonious.
Compared to the pictures of the artist’s previous exhibition Ultima Thule, these artworks evoke the remote mountains and waters of Iceland with much cooler and calmer colors, and these hazy, grayish, silvery shades make the scenes in these pictures, if it is possible, even more mysterious and mythical. The coloring, on the other hand, is not the only factor accounting for this change: whereas previously on his canvases, the painter invited the viewers to an unknown northern island, now, one founds themselves ”even beyond the Glass Mountain”, or at least in such a scenery where the glass mountains sometimes float upside down and where water and sky are indistinguishable and interchangeable. The features of the terrain and the rivers, clouds and puddles are merged together to such extent that, even though it is completely evident at first sight that these are abstract landscapes, the elements of which one can easily make out, it is yet unclear whether they are chains of mountains reflected in the water of a lake or one can only see a small patch of steamy sky. In his latest works, Hegedus applies a characteristic polygonal web-structure that resembles glistening crystals refracting light as a prism. His snow-covered mountains are sometimes sublimely robust, at other times, they are light and airy, and with his icy blues, turquoises and grays, combining various media and different types of paint, Hegedus lends a damp and moist quality to the landscapes on his canvases. But by sneaking in some tiny colorful droplets, spots and crystal splinters glistening like a diamond, he achieves that his paintings are still not cold or even rigid.
There is another group among these paintings, in the case of which the artist left the land of perpetual snows, and descending into the valleys, he dazzles the viewer with the vivid colors of spring. In these images, the sky is rosy, and among the emerald, jade and moss greens, teeny spots of cadmium and magenta colored flowers are glinting gently.
Anna Voelgyi