Glaze and Gut

'Then I arose, and emboldened myself, and walked in that valley; and I beheld its ground to be composed of diamonds, with which they perforate minerals and jewels, and with which also they perforate porcelain and the onyx; and it is a stone so hard that neither iron nor rock have any effect upon it, nor can any one cut off aught from it, or break it, unless by means of the lead-stone. All that valley was likewise occupied by serpents and venomous snakes, every one of them like a palm-tree; and by reason of its enormous size, if an elephant came to it, it would swallow it. Those serpents appeared in the night, and hid themselves in the day, fearing lest the rukh and the vulture should carry them off, and after that tear them in pieces. And there appeared to me a cave near by; so I walked thither, and I found its entrance narrow. I therefore entered it and, seeing a large stone by its mouth, I pushed it, and stopped with it the mouth of the cave while I was within it; and I said within myself, I am safe now that I have entered this place; and when daylight shineth upon me, I will go forth, when I removed the stone with which I had closed the entrance of the cave, and went forth from it.
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I then walked along the valley; and, lo, a great slaughtered animal fell before me, and I found no one. So I wondered thereat extremely; and I remembered a story that I heard long before from certain of the merchants and travellers, and persons in the habit of journeying about—that in the mountains of the diamonds are experienced great terrors, and that no one can gain access to the diamonds, but that the merchants who import them know a stratagem by means of which to obtain them: that they take a sheep, and slaughter it, and skin it, and cut up its flesh, which they throw down from the mountain to the bottom of the valley: so, descending fresh and moist, some of these stones stick to it. Then the merchants leave it until midday, and birds of the large kind of vulture and the aquiline vulture descend to that meat, and, taking it in their talons, fly up to the top of the mountain; whereupon the merchants come to them, and cry out at them, and they fly way from the meat. The merchants then advance to that meat, and take from it the stones sticking to it.'

(“The Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor”, Arabian Nights)
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In his paintings, Ádám Dallos turns classic hunting still lifes inside out, the carcases of animals being slaughtered, eviscerated, opened up by skilful movements. Laid out are wild and domestic animals, such as calves, piglets, lambs, rabbits, turkeys, chicken, pigeons, frogs, squirrels and so on – all common in Central and Eastern Europe. A calf as a majestic trophy is halved and spread out, a lamb mercilessly butchered, rabbits skinned with abject professionalism to have their pink fibres and flesh sparkle pink. Dallos combines generous strokes of brush and dramatic expression to present frontal and top views of lifeless animals set on tables or hanging in stormy landscapes. The precision of depiction is suggestive of a taxonomical scientific positivism, its turbulent colour contrasts of Soutine’s butcher-scenes, while the classical animal symbolism of European culture also transpires in the background. “The materiality of paint becoming sensual is important. I am always after shapes and forms that say something”, says Dallos about his work. He began with homoerotic nude boys in front of pink backgrounds and has now come to animal portraits and still lifes of dissected and laid out animal carcasses. Glaze and Gut is a selection from the output of the past two years, from Butcher's Jewel series (2015) with its deep-toned skinned still lifes to the recent pieces (Slaughter landscapes, 2016) with their the explosive colour baths and expressive butchery landscapes.

Mira Dalma Makai belongs to an emerging Hungarian artist generation. During her graphic design studies, she started experimenting with the surface effects of pigments more compact than lithography oil. ”I subordinate myself to the materials,” she says, “and I accept what I see because if I did not it would be rather annoying”. During her studies at the Akademie der Bildende Künste Munich, Makai was acquainted with the experimental opportunities offered by ceramics. Under her hands, the soft material arranges into organic ruffles, folds and waves. The enlarged abstract forms, which recall microorganisms, arteries, corals, viscera and precious stones, are glazed in vivid colours, giving a special aesthetic quality to the fossilized organic motifs achieved by firing at 1060°C. Makai’s characteristic visual world is also reflected in her abstract oil paintings. Glaze and Gut presents her works from the previous two years, mostly from the Organ Landscape and Pipes and Stones series.
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Ádám Dallos (1986, Szombathely) is a unique representative of a generation of young Eastern European figurative painters. In 2010, he participated at the Ars homo erotica exhibition at the National Museum of Warsaw, which created quite a stir (a work of his was reproduced on the cover of the catalogue). He also took part at the group exhibition entitled ORGANS and EXTASY in 2012 at the Stredoslovenská Gallery in Banska Bystrica. His work was included in The Freedom of the Past group exhibition from Róbert Alföldi’s private collection at the Hungarian House of Photography — Mai Manó House in 2016. He had solo shows at Bumbum Gallery (2011, 2012), Blitz Gallery (2013) and Platán Gallery (2015). His works can be found in several international private collections from Switzerland to Poland. Ádám Dallos lives and works in Budapest.
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Mira Dalma Makai (1990, Budapest) is the youngest Hungarian representative of the new, organic-associative abstractionism. She creates oil paintings, ceramic objects, and lithography as well. Altough Makai obtained her MA at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts only in 2016, she had won the Esterházy Art Award prize in 2015. The magazines Artlocator and Artkartell published articles about her as an emerging, fresh talent. In 2015 she studied at the Akademie der Bildende Künste in Munich. She lives and works in Budapest.

Curator: Gábor Rieder