Meet the artist at the opening reception for A Solo Exhibition by Steven Balogh.
When: October 5 – 25, 2023
Opening reception on Saturday, October 7th from 6-9 PM
Where: RIVAA Gallery
527 Main Street, New York, NY 10044
Presenting mostly large and extra large paintings from 2010 – 2023. Some of his well-known ballet-themed 3 dimensional artworks will also be on view.
About Steven Balogh
Balogh was born István Vilmos Balogh in Hungary, Europe. At the age of 20, he was drafted for mandatory service in the Hungarian Air Force. This precipitated his deep involvement with art: starting at age 21, he began making artworks that reflected his military service, deadly plane and parachute accidents, and the fear and brutality he witnessed in Soviet-occupied Hungary.
In 1986, he fled Hungary, only to be interned for 7 months in an Austrian Refugee camp. Afterwards he was granted political asylum to the United States in ‘86, moving to New York City, and arriving with a plastic bag from the International Rescue Committee containing some personal necessities. He became a U.S. citizen in 1995.
Balogh has held 26 solo shows and participated in dozens of group shows in Europe, the United States, and Asia. He has art figures in the permanent collections of museums around the globe. His art has always been politically- and socially-conscious, involved with the times and his surroundings.
What are others saying about the artist?
“Balogh likens the motive and method for his works as spiritual and technical interpretations, palimpsest and remixed. The repurposing of both materials and substance found in the Ballet series is present as well in Mystery (Godwin-Ternbach Museum Collection). So seamless is this composition of disparate, layered images that one is lead to believe it is a montage of images skillfully placed together. But it is not. It is a single image of trees and unidentifiable elements of a memory, an image of spectral beauty, it is greater than its parts. In its tondo form it suggests a globe filled with colorful and integrated but unfathomable parts.” — Dr. Amy Winter PhD, Curator, Advisory Board member at Godwin-Ternbach Museum, New York
“Balogh’s creative world rewaves his surroundings. No matter whether this presentation is philosophical, minimal, literary, conceptual, abstract, or commentary on beauty or on the grotesque; the concept has exceeded the capacities for a conventional control and a rational comprehension.” — Luchia Meihua Lee, Curator and Executive Director, TAAC, New York City
“In the 40-some years he has been active as an artist, Steven Balogh has absorbed and witnessed much of the barbarism of recent history. But l, for one, see a life force pulsing through almost all his work. If pain can be transmuted into ecstasy, as the poet Max Jacob once suggested, Balogh has found a way to turn suffering and misfortune into many different kinds of visual pleasure through the alchemy of art.” — Ann Landi, Contributing Editor, ARTnews, Founder and Editor, Vasari21.com
