József Csató's paintings are imprints of his passionate and organic studio work, often based on sketches with full artistic value from his sketchbooks. His figurative portraits and genre paintings, which neglect the mediatised reality, are characterised by an archaic, brutal and expressive language. Everyday objects and situations often appear in his compositions, sometimes in irony and another time reflected in banal and humorous paraphrases on the canvas. Csató's research on painting focuses on the possibility of creating a new visual language, which he sees as something best made possible through an abstract mode of expression.
In general, Csató's art deals with the exploration and variation of the potential of a shape or a figure in a repetitive way. Strange forms resembling plants, anthropomorphic hybrid figures, alongside motifs reminiscent of pipes, drops, pots and freely invented "signs" emerge from the surfaces of his sensual paintings, bursting with colours. The frequent perspective shifts in his image spaces and Wunderkammer-like compositions make it difficult for the deceived eye to locate whether the scenes and motifs in the canvases are brought to life in an interior or exterior space. His debut exhibition TREASURES, TREES, FIRE and BONES at Double Q Gallery not only creates reflections of traditional genres but also showcases paintings (Knife Balancer, 2022 and Look at the Future!, 2022) and murals adapted specially for the gallery's exhibition space.
His compositions combine the different visual languages of art history, from which he then creates his unique and distinctive constellations. The simplicity of form is combined with pop culture and art historical references in this dissolved visual world characterised by humour and playfulness. The compositions often feature totemic figures and hybrids reminiscent of ancient, prehistoric cultures and civilisations, which Csató deliberately fuses with European compositional schemes such as still life, landscape or even portraiture. In the exhibition, snapshot-like glimpses of these referenced genres and prototypes are presented, encouraging viewers’ curious eyes to linger, discover and examine the hidden art historical references. By playing with forms, and merging them into each other, the vivid intersecting, embracing movement leads both Csató’s and the viewer's eye from one motif to the next, from one image to the next.
According to the painter's definition, most of his paintings should fall into the basic category of collections, as their pictorial formulation and compositional principles, present the forms and motifs favoured by the painter in different constellations. These are pictorial "collections" inspired as much by the dimensions of the macro-and microcosm as by encyclopaedic collections of Wunderkammers motivated by a desire for scientific and philosophical knowledge, research and hoarding. Hiding Treasures (2022) and Face Kit with Bones (2022) are collections that often arrange motifs around each other without any narrative. Furthermore, Knife Balancer (2022) and Generation Gaps (2022), which the painter himself classifies as classical figurative compositions, can be considered a subcategory of collections. The structures of Vanity and Happiness (2022) and New Friends (2022) can also be seen as paraphrases of the natura morta image type, which represents the decay of organic, natural forms, while Look at the Future! (2022) and the three Untitled (2022) watercolour on paper can be interpreted as particular pictorial formulations of assemblages that come to life in outdoor spaces. The scenes and the occasionally three dimensional, sculpture-like formations placed in curved, aedicula-like spaces can be connected to architectural and art historical references from European Christian culture.
Thanks to the particular technique used by the artist, his image spaces oscillate between drawing and painting. However, the layering of paint surfaces and their frottage-like rubbing back also open up the space to an enigmatic dimension. Furthermore, owing to the rubbing, a piece of the artist's studio lives on and is visualized within the space of each painting, as the studio wall’s texture is captured and imprinted on the surface of the rubbed back canvas.
— Mónika Zsikla
