Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art is pleased to present Mira Dalma Makai's latest exhibition in Budapest, which explores themes of the balance between nature, mythology, control, and spontaneity.
Mira Dalma Makai (1990) is one of the youngest Hungarian representatives of a new abstraction that exploits the associative field of organic non-figurativity. Her art, rooted in a contemporary exploration of abstraction, draws parallels with the aesthetics of surrealism and pop art, combining whimsical elements with a pithy critique of modern visual culture. As a creator, she is skilled in painting, printmaking, as well as ceramics. In recent years, at the forefront of her interest across a broad range of genres, have been ceramics. Beside her recent spatially positioned ceramic sculptures, in her installations, an increase of relief compositions oscillating between two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional space has been present. Don't Forget To Look At The Stars presents a selection of these ceramic works.
For Mira Makai, storytelling is always achieved through the use of symbolic elements/figures. In her recent international exhibitions, the representation of alternative realities and situations has become a playful and self-critical means of exploring the interconnection between personal and impersonal human relationships in the reality surrounding her. The association of elements of her present exhibition, in terms of colour, form and use of materials, can be interpreted individually or as part of a single thematic installation. In creating her work, the artist has envisioned the end of days in a surreal world of fictional civilisation. The imaginary creatures that appear in the painted spaces celebrate, as if in a bacchanalia, the last days of a world of which they are not only a part, but whose end they have also caused. Ceramic reliefs on the walls commemorate defining moments and figures of the culture imagined by the artist, while monochrome sculptures on the floor of the exhibition space rise from the ground as idols of a decaying civilisation. The use of monochromatic surfaces is also a new endeavour in the oeuvre: this time Makai eliminated the colour that envelops surreal scenes and grotesque characters from the totemic idol figures, and relegated the colours to the surfaces of the amorphous textile carpets surrounding the figures. In addition to the emergence of reliefs and monochrome surfaces, textiles and works combining textiles and ceramics also introduce new perspectives in her oeuvre.
Makai's compositions almost always evoke ambivalent feelings in the viewer: while the light colours and colour harmonies of the surfaces are pleasing, the anthropomorphic creatures and the scenes they bring to life are disconcerting. But confusion is also the artist's explicit aim, which she has achieved this time by combining contradictory contents (celebration and fate) and by giving the exhibition and certain compositions their titles. Her imaginary story is again inspired by the world of ritual, magic and mythology. This practice is a constant presence in Makai's art and an almost constant reference for her. Thanks to her reinterpretations, the obscure and mysterious world of magic, occult doctrines, the philosophies of natural religion and ancient rites becomes not only contemporary, but also less specific in time and culture.
//Mónika Zsikla//
