Martin Góth' s soloshow curated by Dalma Eszter Kollár at 1111 in Budapest.

Martin Góth: Start Menu
Curated by Dalma Eszter Kollár
2 - 13 February, 2022
1111 Gallery, Budapest

A square grid of uniform size is the starting point for the works in the exhibition Start Menu. The artist complements or disrupts this strict visual system with fictional characters, well-known visual signs, optical games and painterly gags.
With their square grid structure and figurative elements, the exhibited paintings also refer to classic analogue board games (chess, amoeba) and the iconic video games of the ’90s, such as Snake, Minesweeper and the even earlier Tetris. The images show the typical characters and elements of these computer games: the villain, the sidekicks, the avatars, the obstacles and the power-ups. All of this is expressed in the visual language of the artist’s milieu and generation, including symbols of online communication, the logos of global brands, the visual identities of different electronic music genres, as well as the emblems of certain narcotics with the illustration of their effects.
Dividing the image into squares implies the digital imaging based on pixels also summons the cartography based on the grid of longitudes and latitudes. Just as video games often work with levels to be mapped, the paintings can be understood as maps of certain tracks or increasingly difficult levels of the game, which are complemented by formatted painting details scattered throughout the exhibition space.
Standing in the gallery space, the viewer is also taken to a map, a start menu with the exhibited works. By walking on the tenfold magnification of the square grid of the paintings, the viewer themself becomes a character in the game, a figure in the overhead view. The title of the exhibition marks not only the beginning of the game, but also the start of the artist's career.

/Dalma Eszter Kollár/

Photo: Dávid Biró