INFOMERCIALS FROM HELL

Romanian-Hungarian artist Botond Keresztesi produces one-of-a-kind, tongue-in-cheek paintings by merging multiple painting techniques, a collage of technology and classical artworks and the feeling of surreal, fever-induced dreams.
botond_uvodka

His style can be traced back to European Avant-Garde movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Surrealism. Keresztesi is combining these different artistic approaches with topics such as dreams, ecstasy, sin, death, passion or hallucinations. These surreal compositions are created by combining different techniques such as airbrush and masking in combination with traditional brush work. Although the paintings have a strong emphasis on the figurative, they cannot be categorized as photo-realistic. 

1
2

Keresztesi’s paintings create enchanting alternative realities by drawing the viewer into unknown, yet strangely familiar, microcosms. The works collide 2D and 3D as a reflection of visuals absorbed in everyday life and brought together in a surreal landscape. Dreamlike and sometimes eerie, they connect digital images, Internet surfaces, cybernated realities, infomercials, pop and avant-garde culture in a stream of consciousness floating across the canvas.

3
4
5

WORDS BY THE AUTHOR / I always wanted to make paintings. Since I was a child, I was drawn to art history, especially the history of painting, so it was quite obvious when I was 18 years old to attend the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. I graduated from the Painting studio without any issues. My main aesthetic is based on modernism and the mixture of artistic and historical references. Surrealism had a deep impact on me, especially René Magritte and his object-centered visual language. Also important is my relationship to technology, which came from my engineer father, I guess. 

6
7
8

BIO / Botond Keresztesi (1987* Marosvásárhely, RO) is a Romanian/Hungarian artist working in painting, drawing, and site-specific painting installations. Remixing references from Art History, popular culture, virtual space, and everyday life, his paintings crystalise into the fragmented realities of dream-like landscapes. Recent solo and group exhibitions have taken place at: Galerie Deroullion, Paris; Storage Capacité, Berlin; Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels; Kunstfort, Vijhuizen, NL; Future Gallery, Berlin; Artkartell Project Space, Budapest; Labor Gallery, Budapest; Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest; and Schloss, Olso. He’s planning an autumn painting exhibition in Prague in 2020.

9
10
11

1/ Never look back
2/ Pokemon hydra
3/ Sensual connections
4/ The last emperor
5/ The real face of things
6/ Ice age
7/ Monster truck
8/ Searching for some grass
9/ Mother of the internet
10/ Forbidden spring
11/ Silent nude 
12/ The Scorpion
13/ Scorpion bride

20190119 - KERESZTESI BOTI REPRO3278
20190119 - KERESZTESI BOTI REPRO3277

Artwork / Botond Keresztesi

Photos / David Biro and Aron Weber

Interview / Markéta Kosinová

Did you like it?
Share it with your friends

You may also like

Linda Morell’s recent exhibition dives into the jellified oceans of a future Earth, a place so alienated from mankind that it itself is uncertain which life forms it will favor. Inspired by Paradise Lost, mythologies and collapse of civilization, her unique installations explore a non-linear temporality through materials and interplay.
Léa Porré’s fascination with transcending the same old ways of interpreting history finds expression in her 3D works and installations. Today, the London-based Belgian artist presents two of her recent projects, Arcana Arcorum and The Beginning of All Moist Things which, in her style, “experiment with 3D world-building as a tool to heal from our past, and future-forecast.”
Visions of escaping civilization and technology for a simple life of manual labor have crept into many an artists’ dreams since the industrial revolution, but Alexandr Martsynyuk’s recent work explores the inevitable inescapability of automation even in a rustical, barebones existence. Join him today on a routine trip to the tomato allotments in his speculative spin on the post-apocalypse.
The long-running creative collaboration between Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus has recently led the Polish duo to explore the non-linearity of time, speculative approaches and the notion of catastrophe through their multimedia works. In their own words, “even if the environments we render are dark and repulsive they always contain elements of restoration and new life”, hanging in a balance between the surgical and organic. Today, you get to join them in their realms accompanied by an insightful interview.