Name, City, Animal, Thing

Illustrator Fero Lipták invites visitors on a journey from names to imagination with his exhibition.

Right at the start, Lipták points out that this will be a game. Name, city, animal, thing… A children’s game in which one person recites the alphabet and the other stops them with the command “Stop.” And like every game, this one insists on the inviolability of its rules, but at the same time anticipates that they will be broken anyway. It seems that the author breaks them with gusto. For example, by his very choice of paintings, drawings, and illustrations. The characteristic red figure, so typical of his artistic style, barely appears here. Lipták escapes the predictability of the name to focus on motifs of the city. But even his cities do not intend to submit to the rules. They are somehow excessive. As if they have gone wild in a compulsive movement of growth. More blocks, more floors, more wings. This architecture of excess does not bypass the figure either. It transforms it into one of its urban zones, because the principle from which it grows is deeply human. Is it possible to break free from this dictates of the city? Lipták tries this in his imagination, in a world of fantastical animals and things. Where flying tires float in the air and rabbits undergo cleansing baths, the realization soon dawns that the form of these surreal images is somehow familiar. He willingly revolves around the gravitational center of the name. The game demands obedience. Unless… The author invents again to remind us that the charm of the game lies primarily in its imperfection. The tiny shapes of buildings, animals, and things in his naive drawings are just finding their
way out of non-existence. It’s as if someone is just learning how to use a pencil. And… Stop.