Soós Tamás (Pécs, 1984)
The artist of the eighties has re-discovered the spontaneous, direct mode of pictorial expression; this change in form,however, is hut a sign of a more profound change artistic thinking is undergoing. The new generation of the eithties seem to have easily got over the analytic and intellectual period of modern art during which concepts and disciplines were extremely polarized, with beauty und truth also treated as completely distinet entities. The nex generation do not experience this polarization as a conflict, they do not feel they are forced to choose between the »esthetical’ and the ’ethical’ and do not suffer from an irreconcilable contrast between then any more. That is, however, not because they are unaware of the distinction at all. On the contrary, they see art and the world from a different point of view which is more ordinary, more sensible and more personal,too. And, from this basically existential point of view, a different light is shed on the absolute entities in question which thereby assume a new meaning, losing their absoluteness and becoming easy to manage or dis-appearing completely. For the new generation these opposing qualities can be reconciled, both the ’esthetical’ and the ’ethical’ - or what is left of them - can be internalized, and the world for them is no more as extensive as to defy conception and experience. The artist of the eighties has also got rid of his inhibitions about languaga and his stylistic constraints: pure visuality or a symbolicalmetaphorical languaga; geometric-rational or instinctive-exprès sive manner of expression - even these alternatives have by now been neutralized. All of them can be used, individaully or in combinations with others, in a free, ecclectic manner of expression. Involved in the upheaval of the new times but with-drawn into "a more sheltered corner" of time, Tamás Soós makes his paintings with quiet selfconfidence, paint-ing in which he puts "incongruous" elements side by side in the spirit of the new times but equally with unaffected self-reliance at the same time.