Bálint Varga is not only a talented young screen printer, but also an artist, whose first serigraphs we are now presenting. Bálint graduated from the Krea School of Contemporary Art in 2019 with a degree in design graphics, and from 2020 he is the head of the Printa screen printing studio. We owe all our screen-printed products to him, he creates every day in our studio surrounded by paints and screen frames. Now he told us about his own creations.

When and why did you become interested in art?
I would rather say when I became interested in graphics again. In the beginning, everyone draws or something similar, then it fades away for many, as it happened to me. When I went to tourism and hospitality after graduation, after the first lecture, I realized what I am not. That's when I started drawing again and later enrolled in graphics. Here I rediscovered drawing, which became an important means of expression for things that were not expressed in me. This still doesn't make me feel like I can always express what I want on paper or otherwise, but I'm getting closer to it, if only through a suitable color.

Why screen printing, what attracts you to this technique?

For me, purely computer-based design turned out to be sterile, even though I also started these works on paper. This is how the Printa internship opportunity came to me.

Here I learned a lot about screen printing from Dóri Ladjánszki and Laci Silek . - For that I am extremely grateful to them.

Screen printing, for me, feels like it has everything I was looking for through graphics. A patent, a mere expression existing for its own sake. But the customer relationship can also appear, where we are looking for an answer to some problem, and where the graphic is also involved in the field of usability. A game of aesthetics and function, in different proportions. I see the challenge in the common mixture of these two, and I like to make them collide and push their limits.

Furthermore, it is very liberating and exciting in sifting that, no matter how much it can be planned, the result partly depends on chance. It requires a certain amount of trust that no matter how much we planned, selected the right paper, mixed the paint, the end result often shows something different than the plan. We will not have complete control over it. I think that makes it beautiful. Of course, how much we leave to chance also depends on the work invested, but a little always remains as long as we work by hand.

What is the main motif of this series and why?

I always had before me the creation of my own series of prints, but I could not find a topic that was decisive enough.

In this case, something was finally formulated on paper. I'm not a man of words when it comes to feelings, not because I don't want to say them, but rather because I don't really know what's going on inside me many times. Fortunately, I had the equipment and everything else to try anyway.
As the main motif, I drew the outlines of the shapes and cut them out, then continued working with them. These shapes were later reworked on screen and composed to different sizes.

People and hands. The meeting of these. An encounter where I don't know where I begin and where I end. Nor when the connection ends, if it even started.

The hand that reaches out, takes what it wants, what moves when it wants. The individual, as he sees himself when he is with someone else, and is he an individual when he is with someone else. Does anyone else start where I end or do we have something in common? In summary, the relationship and connection between two people, and the questions that arise in this, which occupied me during the work.