THE​ ​DAWN​ ​AFTER ​ ​YESTERDAY

‘The Dawn After Yesterday” is Szász’s first ever showing in the United Kingdom. The exhibition includes mainly his recent body of work together with a rare installation. The presentation can be viewed as a transposition of the artist’s memory and vision of an environment changed forever by the impact of human actions.

Looking at the aftermath of a catastrophe of the past and the possible scenario of a repeat in the future by blurring the boundaries between history, fact and fiction, surreal and real, memory and imagination, past and future, suffering and salvation, struggle and freedom in exploring the fact ‘memory is identity’.

Szász’s paintings depict scenes of ruins, deserts, flooded lands and machines all having social and political symbolism. The conflicting personal and social identity is emphasised by the faceless workers and inhabitants. We see balls and balloons symbolising authority of a new ideology promising a collective consciousness.

In ‘The Rise of the New Dawn (2016)’, we see holey balls of hope and gigantic systems above faceless humans as they toil within the ruins of cables and murky muddy waters of the floods trying to salvage something of life. And in ‘Shadow Hunters (2016), once again faceless beings collectively recover and preserve holey tubes of hope from the ruins as hot air balloons of authority circle round, looking from high above. The colour tones and hues are so effective in these compositions that serves up a dream and bitter awakening in equal measures.

The artist through these works is holding up a mirror from the past to question of the likely possibility of an impending apocalypse in future as a result of human actions. The struggle between man and machine is highlighted with the gigantic representations, depicted on occasions as extra-terrestrials on earth.

Along side the works of painting and collage, is a rare showing of a new installation piece drawing on elements in scenes depicted in some of the painting narratives. An imaginary scene frozen in ti me as oil drums painted in his signature holes (holey balls) that never pierce through the other side but rather into an unknown void are mounted on thin elongated stilts that remind us of a desolate town.