Hecker, Péter: Interior with Board-Game Soccer (2006)

The pictures of Péter Hecker (b. 1963 in Budapest) present “Hungarian reality”: that awkward, bumbling, yet still cozy environment for little Stevie and his sidekick, a Curious George-type, to take pictures of. “Chucky” is there, posing with a big lunchmeat sausage, and everyone is wearing sweatpants with skin-tight Chinese cotton t-shirts. The starting points for these paintings is generally a found − or collected − amateur photograph; sometimes he himself sets up scenes and photographs them. He calls his style “pop-realist” and “neo-lame,” coloring and adorning the pictures and their components like so many coloring books, with no fear of even the wildest blues and greens. The room interior that we see here is a typical Hungarian variety that was standard for decades: the little corner in which stands some colonial furniture with horrible twisted legs, offering some faint signs of life (an ironing board, a plant, a multi-purpose water sprayer, and a tiddlywink launched by a child playing at the feet of the adults). Here too is a remnant of the 70s: a designer standing lamp with a bright orange shade, accompanied by the pièce de résistance, a widescreen TV with its remote control, serving as the hearth of house; a magic box, on its screen a taste of high/low art: Andy Warhol's Marilyn.