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"BudapeSt Louis" Exhibition Opening at Untitled Fine Art
"BudapeSt Louis" features new work from local artist J.B. Nearsy's summer residency in Budapest, Hungary. The collection of abstract, geometric, and emotive works invites us to consider the connections between our homes and the foreign, and how we distinguish the two.
J.B. Nearsy is a self-taught artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. BudapeSt Louis features work from his summer residency at the Hungarian Multicultural Center, an artist-run non-profit in Budapest. “Exploring this beautiful city firsthand was mind-nourishing and inspirational,” says Nearsy. “The architecture is well-preserved and as art nouveau as one might imagine. Sculptures extend up from the flat or sharply slanted roof peaks of porcelain or ceramic, adorning intricately framed windows, thematically placed between lower windows via murals or further stone sculptures, and at ground level with infinitely varying entrances, either at the street or offset into grand archways through which stairs ascend upwards out of sight.”
The artist spent three weeks depicting what he saw in the central European city through vivid colors, frenetic lines, and geometric forms, and describes his methods as “expressive and loose, often abstract or semi-representational.” With this series, Nearsy raises questions of semiotics: though these artworks are very abstract, we still understand them as representations of the architecture in Budapest. How abstracted can a work be while still evoking something concrete? And beyond visual art, how far can the representation be from what it represents, and still be understood as linked?
Along the same lines, Nearsy’s work has us consider the relationship between here and there. In anything foreign, there is still a tinge of the familiar – perhaps it is a corner shop that reminds you of the one by your apartment, or the woman in the park with the kind eyes of your mother. Some things are shared across the human condition, able to transcend language and borders. This is the strength of Nearsy’s work: his use of evocative colors, lines, and shapes is universal, and can elicit a response from anyone, even those who haven’t shared his experiences. His new series makes us consider the concept of “place” in a different light; no matter where you are, home is never as far away as you think.
