Mira Makai: Don’t Forget To Look At The Stars is on view at Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art, Budapest
January 29 – February 28, 2025
Mira 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, and ceramics. In recent years, ceramics have been at the forefront of her interest across a broad range of genres. Besides her recent spatially positioned ceramic sculptures, her installations oscillating between two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional space have 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 associations of elements of her present exhibition, in terms of color, 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 civilization. The imaginary creatures that appear in the painted spaces celebrate as if in a bacchanalia, the last days of our 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 civilization. The use of monochromatic surfaces is also a new endeavor in the oeuvre: this time, Makai eliminated the color that envelops surreal scenes and grotesque characters from the totemic idol 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 colors and color harmonies of the surfaces are pleasing, the anthropomorphic creatures and the scenes they bring to life are disconcerting. However, confusion is also the artist’s explicit aim, which she has achieved this time by combining contradictory content (celebration and fate) and giving the exhibition and specific 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 become not only contemporary but also less specific in time and culture.
Contact
info@einspach.com
Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art
Hold Utca 12
Budapest, 1054
Hungary
Photos courtesy of Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art
