Tamás Soós - Mythology

Tamás Soós' work is characterized by perpetual changes, as well as by a peculiar coexistence and simultaneity of different forms of expression.

In his series entitled Mythology, the antique motif, “The Judgement of Paris” is combined with the Christian motif, "St. John the Baptist", in such a way that both interpretations are projected onto the artist himself and the meanings describing the sensation of the spontaneous and fleeting psychological state associated with the calligraphic transformation of the surface are actualized. At the same time, he invests the motifs with personal and individual qualities. Soós also discovered the "Hannibal story” which served to him as a metaphor of certain attitudes as well as of answers given to various moral and historical problems, and which he used in a number of his oil paintings and watercolours.

In this period, Soós's oeuvre was based on the picturesque and imaginary world of a culture which, in that particular form, had never existed, and which came complete with its own heroic figures, ideas, dynamic art and colourful and chimerical architecture. A fine and complex colourism entered his painting, along with a kind of mannerist decadence: hedonism and ornamentalism to screen off the deeper feelings and dramatic gestures. While his ornamentalism was increasing in his small scale drawings and paintings, through its multiple meanings, symbolic references and art historical motifs, his emotionally charged thematic world came to express an artistic totality based on the impersonation of the "cultural metaphor”. This artistic programme enabled him to demonstrate the authenticity of his search for a new identity.

//Excerpt from Lóránd Hegyi’s essay titled The Possibilities of Metaphorical Forms//