
Attila Bagi
The Seeable Joy of Ashes
Project Info
- 💙 Longtermhandstand, Budapest
- 💚 Peter Bencze
- 🖤 Attila Bagi
- 💜 Peter Bencze
- 💛 Áron Weber
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Attila Bagi’s latest solo exhibition presents a new series of paintings rooted in his
fascination with the overlooked, ordinary objects of daily life. These compositions, built
from found readymades, bring together personal memories and cognitive history in
unexpected ways. Central to the artist's exploration is a deeply personal connection:
the love of smoking cigarettes, a habit that threads through his works like a recurring
symbol, anchoring fleeting fragments of perception and memory. In Bagi's own words,
"Finding the links between my childhood interests and my current creative habitus is
a much more complex challenge. Perhaps the most basic attitude that characterised
me then and still characterises me is a love of observation and curiosity about
materials." This curiosity manifests itself through the transformation of everyday
objects into poetic, multilayered narratives. The interplay of the past and present is at
the heart of these works. As Bagi reflects, "I am much more influenced by my
perception of the present and by fragments of memory, or perhaps most of all by the
magical relationship between the two." This relationship finds expression in the
painting Blooming Forever, where the circular pattern of fireworks contrasts with the
withered petals of a tulip, paired with the unusual image of a cigarette butt in a banana
skin. "The wilted flower, unlike in previous still-life paintings, is for me the constant in
this picture, because even withered it is more magnificent and graceful than a firework
display about to explode," Bagi notes. Bagi's works resonate with the ideas explored
in Donald Judd's essay Special Objects, drawing attention to the significance of
everyday forms and their capacity to transcend the mundane. Through his process,
Attila Bagi invites viewers to share in his "love of observation," revealing the poetic
and transformative power of the everyday.
Peter Bencze