#techboyz is part of a fourteen-piece series of acrylic paintings inspired by the everyday life of young information technology workers in Montreal and captures a special moment in time when they regain a sense of freedom after a long period of isolation. The coronavirus has interrupted life in ways that were just unimaginable. After enduring a long dystopian pandemic, I was taken by seeing so many young men huddling together, searching for answers at such a critical time in their life. Most of these young men are preoccupied with themselves, and their environment, and they are powerless in the face of the pandemic. For some of them, the COVID-19 crisis has caused considerable damage to their possibilities of employment, and their mental health. This generation's happiness and security will continue to face long-term socioeconomic consequences of this crisis.
#techboyz is a series of paintings that brings together different strategies and techniques to express my relationship with the subject formally and conceptually. The paintings are based on fictionalized reality and the human condition, constructing visual situations with multiple layers of meaning and possible narratives. My ongoing concerns with the process of abstraction and figuration enable a unique dialogue against a background of different styles. The patterns and colors allow certain characteristics to enter the process and blur the distinction between the virtual and the actual. I’m interested in experimenting with the hybridity of both form and subject, where the image is not only restricted to what we see, but how we experience memory, time, and space in our contemporary digital living. The dynamics between representation and abstraction with reference to technology have dominated my work throughout my career. Within this creative process, I’m interested in unfolding the implications of structural and theoretical formations. My previous work focuses on the representation of bodies in transformation – both organic and artificial. The painting’s surface is used to transform energies and refabricate the body with suggestions of contamination, connectivity, and displacement, reflecting my cultural history as a Hungarian, Romany, and Canadian. In my Contingent Bodies series, fragmented bodies embedded in perpetual rootlessness, containing exile and otherness within themselves. The Renaissance-style polymorphic figures confront sexual and cultural categorization, recasting the body as part imaginary and part construct. Exploring notions of the cyborg and the prosthetic, these figures exist between the human and post-human, biotechnological and sexualized bodies, and the fashion industry and anime.
