Perspective

The title of the picture cycle is in itself a complex philosophical-artistic opening. Perspective is a genuine visual art calling word, while its additional meaning and figurative interpretation also make it a strong calling word. Perspective, that is, a vision of the future, an outlook onto a broader environment, perhaps a worldview, in a positive, personal sense a kind of hope regarding the prospects of human fate. In art history, the invention of linear perspective is tied to the geniuses of the Renaissance. The par excellence pictorial artistic experience—with the spectacle of spatial illusion on a flat surface—is provided by the variety of aerial perspective that captures the gaze following Leonardo’s brush. In the mixed technique on canvas works titled Ardoris I. II. III., the essential elements of aerial perspective are placed at the center: the light ray, the colorism, their interplay. And what is already characteristic of contemporary medial modes of expression: the reflexes, the flashes, the interplay of sometimes earth-brown, sometimes sun-yellow, sometimes rock-gray shades. Enigmatic, frozen water-surface fragments stretch into the geometric order of the artificial structure.

Perspective, “in reverse,” can also be interpreted, leading the gaze and thoughts toward historical times. A characteristic of Győző Sárkány’s art is the attraction to following and invoking cultural-artistic traditions, transposing them into our time. From the rich formal world of his graphic oeuvre that evokes the great masters, in the Perspective series he boldly steps away toward a more medial modern pictography.

Klára Hudra, art historian