ARTIST PROFILE

Eszter Szabó

  • Hungary (b. 1979 in Budapest)
  • Currently in Budapest, Hungary.
  • www.eszterszabo.hu

ARTIST STATEMENT

Eszter Szabó currently lives and works in Budapest. She explores different aspects of everyday situations to comment on current socio-political life in a post-communist country where the actual political situation is quite worrisome. She researches manifestations and the origins of public opinion. Vulnerability, inertia, weariness, unconcern as well as unattainable desires to be perfect or just being someone else, someone 'good' or happy is a general theme that returns in her work within different contexts. Her approach is to observe and wonder at ordinary details that are so familiar that they almost become invisible.

In her work she often invents fictive characters by mixing properties of real individuals, purifying them until she reaches the ‘essence’ of what she is after. She seeks inspiration from the streets, by taking photos, recording videos and speaking with strangers, or by listening to their conversations. Her works are a combination of short animation loops,small sized drawings, aquarelles and oil paintings and photos. Some of her works are comments on already existing images (ie.:pages of a geometry book, a detail of a classical painting, a printed calendar or printed photos). By modifying these images she places them into a completely new context.  


BIOGRAPHY

Eszter Szabó

eszterszabo1@gmail.com

www.eszterszabo.hu

 

Eszter Szabó, born in 1979 Hungary lives and works in Budapest (HU) and Lille (FR). Her art explores two main areas: painting and video. The videos are based on her paintings which are water color on latex or oil on wood.

She graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, painting department in 2006. She has done her post graduate studies at Le Fresnoy, in France. She took part in several workshops, study visits, in Salzburg with Shirin Neshat (in 2006), Erasmus Scholarship in France in (2005), and she also took part in residencies in Paris (in 2010), and in Bielefeld, Germany (in 2010), New York, Brooklyn at Triangle Arts (2012). In 2010 she won the Derkovits Scholarship, which is a grant for emerging young artists in Hungary.

Since she graduated she has had several solo exhibitions in Hungary and in Europe, for example in Taiss Galerie, Paris(FR), in Jozsa Gallery in Bruxelles (BE) and in Artists Unlimited Gallery in Bielefeld (DE). She is also taking part in numerous group shows and art fairs different countires. (I.e.: New York, Indianapolis/USA, Barcelona/ES, Berlin/GER, London/GB, Paris/FR, Rome/IT, Brussels/BE, Klaipeda/LT, Bratislava/SK, Salzburg/AT, Eisenstadt/AT, Östersund, SE)

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