Szabolcs Bozó

Szabolcs Bozó’s œuvre is principally focused on drawing and painting. His bold iconography displays a regressive and joyfully childlike aspect, whose subversive undercurrent emerges from beneath its apparent innocence. In a short space of time, Bozó has developed an immediately recognizable style with his brightly colored zoomorphic creatures, bursting with energy and humor.

Painted in large format, his characters nevertheless appear to be constricted within their frames, as if inflated by an excess of tenderness. More recently, his style has evolved with the introduction of more complex compositions that combine unrestrained choreography with scenic elements and props. Taken as a whole, his oeuvre unfolds as a gallery of endearing creatures whose expressiveness is strikingly human–and at times, all too human.

Bozó’s unique work deliberately flirts with marginality and follows in the wake of the CoBrA movement (Alechinsky, Appel, Jorn) in terms of his figures, or of Franz West in its spirit. Certain similarities with Art Brut or contemporary bad painting (Joe Bradley, Spencer Sweeney, etc.) can also be detected in the register and style of his work.

Szabolcs Bozó (b. 1992 in Hungary) lives and works in London. In recent years, he has enjoyed regular exhibitions in his native Hungary, most notably at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, as well as in China at the M Woods Museum in Beijing and the Sifang Art Museum in Shanghai for example. He has undertaken various residencies, namely at the L21 x Camper Foundation in Palma, Spain in 2018 and in Los Angeles in 2020. His first exhibition in France took place in 2020 at Semiose.