Akos Ezer. Expedition iN THE BACKYARD

We are pleased to announce the first solo show of Hungarian painter Ákos Ezer (born in Pécs, Hungary in 1989) at Tanja Pol Galerie, which is also his first-ever gallery exhibition.

Ákos Ezer’s painting is uncanny: who are all these men tumbling about in the forest, falling off fences and generally doing absurd things? According to the titles, they are philosophers, bass guitarists, and cartographers, beekeepers and hostages who, for example, collect mushrooms or wood, drink and fall about in claustrophobic and - in part - nightmarish scenarios, but sometimes they are just 'in the forest'. They seem to be regular guys, everymen; the protagonists in Ezer’s work are perhaps all of us as we stumble through life. And perhaps especially the artist's alter ego, who naturally seeks, falls, stumbles, and sometimes doesn’t see the forest for the trees.

Ezer’s compositions are dense, the visual space is filled to overflowing, and he generously uses paint as materiality. He combines nearly illusionistically painted details with wild brushstrokes and almost heavy-handed contrasts of color. The latter recall Andreas Schulze, the master of 'rough' contrasts of color refined to the point of elegance. There is a quiet touch of 'socialist' figuration here, perhaps a Neo-Rauch feel, broken by his very own world of color, garish and harsh, like the narrated stories a bit mean. Ezer’s paintings are courageous, he means things seriously, and yet he has a sense of humor. Ákos Ezer was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1989 and lives and works in Budapest and Munich. In 2014, he completed his degree at MKE, the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest.