Bortnyik Sándor, Céllövészet 

Curator: Alright, let's delve into this piece by Sandor Bortnyik. It’s titled "C\u00e9ll\u00f6v\u00e9szet," which translates to "Shooting Gallery," rendered with tempera on panel. What's your immediate take? Editor: Well, the air feels crisp and slightly surreal. The palette's almost pastel, but those guns bring a distinct tension. Are they really just practicing? The whole scene feels subtly charged. Curator: It’s fascinating how Bortnyik synthesizes modernism and figuration here, wouldn’t you agree? His simplification of form aligns with the avant-garde impulse to distill imagery to its essence, mirroring the industrialized process of image-making. It begs the question of accessibility. Was Bortnyik responding to societal shifts? Editor: Totally. There's a cartoonish quality to the figures, but that geometric landscape pulls them into this slightly unsettling space. Each character seems detached, existing solely in their action. It gives me a kind of anxious theater vibe. Is this playful… or a little menacing? Curator: The repetitive use of the circle, both on the targets and within the environment, functions symbolically as both objective and subject of the marksmen. Consider the material reality of paint itself, deliberately applied as a mask on a manufactured ground, masking the reality of panel. Editor: The targets pop in that almost saccharine palette and the figures' stylization renders them as caricatures – stiff bodies with soft curves in strange repose. I'm starting to feel a kind of absurdist humor layered into the unsettling tension. There’s a bizarre ballet happening with these sharp lines, like mechanical actors repeating gestures of aiming. Curator: Exactly! The composition itself—the geometric planes and stark lines—emphasizes that machine aesthetic he's exploring. In its time, that flatness may have even suggested an alternative reality of sorts that runs perpendicular to other paintings being made. A real sign of its modernity! Editor: Right? Modern anxieties playing out as pastoral shooting practice. I keep going back to how he made the canvas breathe such still disquiet through an aesthetic so simple and yet bold. A pretty amazing trick if you think about it. Curator: It offers such insights on that era, doesn’t it? Thanks for providing a bit of creative light. Editor: Likewise! I'll think of targets and landscapes differently from now on!