Sean Scully: Uninsideout Exhibition at Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Following his major retrospective at the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Passenger, in 2020, the institution is dedicating another exhibition to the Irish-born, American artist Sean Scully. Of Uninsideout, as this new exhibition is entitled, Scully explains: 'That title comes from my son, because when I dress him every night to go to bed, I always put his t-shirts inside out, and I wear my t-shirts the same way, because I don’t like the seams. What happens, of course, is that inside out becomes normal, and normal becomes abnormal…'

Over the course of his 50-year career, Scully has created an influential body of work that has marked the development of contemporary abstraction. Fusing the traditions of European painting with the distinct character of American abstraction, his work combines painterly drama with great visual delicacy. Often structured around stripes or layered blocks of colour arranged on horizontal and vertical axes, the layers in his paintings attain a fine balance between calm reflection and an intrinsic vitality. 

A forceful, physical artist, Scully creates intentionally compelling spaces, and his art is defined by acute concentration and care, involving constant negotiation between the monumental and the intimate. While giving primary importance to the physicality of the materials he employs, his art is commanded by the idea of humanity’s betterment, and at the heart of each rigorously composed work lies a near-infinite number of expressive, emotional fluctuations.