Szűcs, Attila: Playground at Night (1995)

Attila Szűcs often makes photo-based paintings, but his style is far from photorealistic. Blurry details fading into foggy haze, overpainted hidden motifs and colour and light effects endow his paintings with a mysterious atmosphere that is sometimes nostalgic and other times eerie. In the centre of the painting Playground at Night, a typical sixties-seventies playground emerges through the haze, with a sandpit and the typical benches surrounding it – red planks on precast concrete legs. Built to fulfil a social utopia, socialist housing estates witnessed generations growing up, with “panel kids” hanging out every afternoon at the playgrounds between the blocks. The former settlers of these housing estates have grown old, kids have grown up and the houses have grown worn. Virtually indestructible, the street furniture survived in these places until around 2004, when the iron monkey bars in the shape of cats, the tower-like rockets with platforms and the slides began to be replaced according to EU standards. Attila Szűcs transforms the collective memory of a former socialist playground into a dream-like night scene of peculiar atmosphere. Most of the image space is covered in a vast dark surface, with the deserted playground hovering in its centre like an empty stage. K.Sz.