acb

The works of Mátyás Erményi evoke pages of a gigantic comic book. Although the artist’s comic-like painting universe is not gravitating around storytelling, it emphasizes the visual characteristic of depicted objects. The main transformative power of the images is their anthropomorphic appearance; they evoke objects or motifs – a stove, a tree, a spider web, a still life in a vase – which have been hiding for a while in our subconscious, and crawl out of our memories displaying dear but clumsy faces that have grown hands and legs. Erményi blends his purely cartoon-like figuration with instinctively developed abstract geometric patterns. His works are reminiscences and fragments of the object culture of the recent past, as if seen from a child’s perspective, and devoid of nostalgic feelings. In his paintings, the basic set of emotional associations is based on ambivalent dichotomies in which kindness and fear, cuteness and melancholy – concepts that have served as the basis of socialisation for multiple Eastern European generations over the past decades – are simultaneously present. Mátyás Erményi’s paintings seem to be magnified doodles or felt-pen drawings, an effect he reaches with the use of paintbrush and acrylic paint. This effect is emphasized by repetitive geometric patterns, and occasionally by painting on raw, unprimed canvas. As an instinctive painter, Erményi displays painterly skills that allow him to elaborate figures and compositions both within a monochrome frame, and in a chromatically complex system switching between complementary colours.

Mátyás Erményi (1992) earned a master degree in painting at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2017. Since 2020 he is creating works in which he recontextualises the visual heritage of Central Eastern Europe. He made his debut at acb Gallery in 2022 in the framework of group exhibition entitled New Wave, and had his first solo exhibition Dusty Doodles at acb in the same year. Mátyás Erményi took part in institutional exhibitions as well, such as the travelling group exhibition presented at MODEM in Debrecen, then at Budapest Gallery in 2022. In addition to his solo exhibition hosted by the New Irokéz Gallery in Szombathely, the artist’s first solo show in Asia also opened at the Double Q Gallery, Hong Kong. This year, his participation at SPARK Art Fair occurs in parallel with his second solo exhibition at acb Gallery in Budapest.

Founded in Budapest in 2003, acb Gallery has consistently grown into one of the leading actors of the Eastern European art scene. The gallery first based its activity on representing Hungarian and international neo-conceptual artists who emerged in the 1990s and mostly worked with non-traditional media. A decade ago the gallery broadened its focus, both towards young, emerging positions, and towards prominent voices of the neo-avant-garde generation who have already left their mark on the Central and Eastern-European art history. In 2015 acb has launched its new department, acb ResearchLab, which focuses on research and publishing. The aim of the ResearchLab is to fill the gap in the reception and publication of Hungarian neo-avant-garde and post-avant-garde oeuvres. acb currently runs three exhibition places: the main gallery, acb Attachment, which functions as project space hosting experimental exhibitions and acb Plus which is dedicated to large-scale solo and group presentations.