Zsolt Bodoni

Zsolt Bodoni (born 1975) is a Hungarian painter who lives and works in Oradea, Romania.

Work
The special history of Transylvania, its religious and cultural diversity, the mingling of Hungarian, Transylvanian Saxon, Jewish, and Romanian cultures as well as the Eastern-European lethargy and vulnerability of the place are among his defining experiences and this duality is what he is eager to grasp in his work. His art observes and reflects upon this historical scenario with skepticism or irony. He delves into archives, peeling back layers, challenging the accepted interpretations, thus redefining our understanding of the origin of subjects related to history, religion or art.

His mode of expression is expressive figurative painting. His large-scale canvases are at the intersection of his personal history, weird, desolate locations, inhabited by people whose presence is not always clearly decipherable; we do not see ordinary stories but a twisted, displaced abstraction of their meaning. Beside the occasionally deep realism of the world depicted, puzzling abstract details figure on his canvas. It is not a structured world but a special symbiosis of painting and reality. Plot does not carry a narrative function. Figurative elements are torn out of their original context. The forms depicted amidst peeling layers are puzzling and enigmatic but their forelife reveals itself indirectly, uncertainly, unpredictively. Bodies estranged of their environment and of themselves step out of the determinedness of time and place—the Eastern-European past.

Biography
Bodoni was born in Aleşd, Romania, and studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, receiving his M.F.A. in 2000. Originally trained as a graphichan, he turned his attention to painting in the mid-nineties. After 20 years spent in Budapest, Hungary, in 2014 he returned in his homeland, Transylvania. He is the co-founder of the Art colony of Elesd, a one-month artist residency in his natal town, since 1997.

Exhibitions and projects

 * 2008 Monuments, FA Projects, London, UK
 * 2007 10 years of the Art Colony of Élesd, Ernst Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary

Selected bibliography and press

 * 2010 Sicha, Choire. "The 23 Must-Buy Artists of the 2010 Miami Art Fairs." The Awl, web. Dec 6 th.
 * 2008 Rudkin, Joe. "Portraits of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." Flavorpill London, 2008

Collections
Bodoni's work is held in the following public collection:
 * Knoxville Museum of Art

Distinctions

 * Top 100 Emerging Artists by Flash Art, 2009