|
|
 |
| |
Detail of one of Balint Zsako’s
exotic watercolour paintings |
Sex and mythology in a family affair
Art seems to be what bonds a Hungarian mother and father and their two sons in a unique show with a fabulous theme, writes Simon Wroe
THE Zsako family don’t talk to each other about art, though all four of them are artists. Father Istvan is a sculptor; mother Anna Torma (she retains her maiden name for her work) is an embroiderer; their eldest son, Balint, is a draughtsman and painter; and David, the youngest child, inscribes photographs with meticulous overlays of pen and ink.
The Zsakos don’t talk about art because they don’t need to. It is the fifth member of their Hungarian family, a silent presence that has always been with them, from their early years in Budapest to the wilds of Canada where they migrated in 1989, concerned about the political situation following the fall of the Soviet bloc.
“It’s always been a part of family life. Always there, in the air, but not an explicit thing,” explains Balint, 29, ahead of the Zsako Torma family exhibition – minus the work of son David – which opens at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in Bloomsbury this week.
“Art was always in the background so my current position was probably inevitable. But I wasn’t a romantic – I spent my childhood playing with Lego. I was on my way to becoming an engineer.”
If it weren’t for art’s thrall, he protests mildly, his father would now be teaching maths and his mother would be a doctor.
It seems the Zsakos never really had a choice though. Every evening after supper each of them would retreat to their corners of the house to work on their projects. Istvan would fashion warriors and goddesses from bronze in his workshop – “the messiest corner of the home” – while Anna sowed elaborate quilts and fabrics, using found objects and the childhood drawings of her sons (she has kept every single one) to illustrate them.
Their work has notes of the primitive and the spiritual; notes which are carried through into Balint’s paintings – lurid watercolour scenes of figures in the rigour of metamorphoses, somewhere between human and organic machine. Sex, mythology, and family all come to the surface in flowering genitalia and echoes of ancient fertility rites.
Surprisingly for a family that’s so close, this latest exhibition is only their second together. But it won’t be the last, Balint insists.
“Most of the time we have shows separately, but for our next exhibition we would love to work together. Our artistic relationship is an intangible connection of shared experiences; it’s always in the background and directs our hands no matter how far away we may be from each other.”
• |
|
|
|
|
|
