Barnabás Lakatos Gelléri: Arriving into Something New

About

Born in 1997, Barnabás is currently a senior student of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. A lover of intense and radiant colours, the young artist Barnabás Lakatos Gelléri has freely adopted the palette of Pop Art — or perhaps anachronistically, the Fauves — with gestures of Neo-Expressionism. For the artist’s first London exhibition, the gallery’s walls will be taken over by large 2 by 2-meter vivid canvases, filling and transforming the space with energy and colour.

Lakatos Gelléri is a leading member and proud supporter of the ‘Queer Budapest’ movement, an initiative bringing together and showcasing queer artists. His artworks usually present a street art aesthetic of flattened perspective, aerosol paint and bold figuration, and, on a deeper level, a powerful sense of resistance to the conservatism of Hungary’s establishment. In his words, ‘here in Budapest, we are fighting for survival as queer artists and this kind of collective visibility gave us a lot of strength and power to our community. I hope that through art we can reach people in Hungary and bring them closer to what we do and who we are.’

Barnabás spends most of his time in his studio experimenting with different techniques and improvising. Before his academic studies, Barnabás used to work with oil and mostly striking, impasto, textured images. When he was later admitted to The Hungarian University of Fine Arts, he also started working with watercolours and later he experimented with a sketchier, felt pen direction and he also discovered spray cans. After taking a short break in the fashion industry, the artist went back to his art, this time developing a mix of spray can, watercolour, and impasto paintings, using all techniques simultaneously. ‘In today's world, many different qualities can work side by side from an aesthetic perspective’, he adds.

The artist is rarely judgemental about his work and thinks that there is not such a thing as good or bad work, as they all form a unique journey, like completing a different puzzle that leads to an exciting finding. There are also specific philosophical questions that inspire Barnabás, such as the significance of silence in the creative practice: ‘it can also be seen that I experimented with a few canvases without painting anything in certain spots. This also has a meaning, it is part of the transformation process, like silence in music, he adds. As the artist comes from a family of musicians, rhythm and music play an important role in his life.

Private View: 5 August 2021, 6-8 pm, 80 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9NG