In their latest solo exhibition, showcased at the acb Gallery, the artist duo Borsos Lőrinc leaves behind the darker, pathos-driven world-building strategies that have characterized their recent works. Instead, under the banner of a new fictional art movement, Neo Inertia, they proclaim a poetic apotheosis of "new inertia" and "absence of stakes." Paradoxically, this includes a kind of aesthetic overproduction and dispersion, through which they collectively revise both their former critical artistic practice and the speculative inquiries that followed it.

Reflecting on and paying homage to the neo-avant-garde artist Bálint Szombathy, who exhibits concurrently at the acb Attachment, they have reworked their own flagship pieces. This positions their politically austere art practice of the 2010s within a creative dialogue that does not shy away from polemics, invoking the spirit of a revolution without iconoclasm. At the same time, it can be understood as a subversive self-critical exercise, an act of artistic self-accusation and self-incrimination—a gesture not foreign to Borsos Lőrinc’s practice.

In this framework, the artists over-identify with perceived or real critiques and phantom accusations regarding their work, often coming from heteronomous artistic positions. They transform these into artistic gestures, reabsorbing them into their autonomous aesthetic program and presenting them in the form of installations visible here. Instead of a self-critique that offers the false promise of absolution, this latest work is marked by self-irony. It embraces a playful, colorful ease (sprezzatura) infused with absurd humor, rather than the solemn aesthetics of overwhelming gestures in the sublime romantic tradition.

Thus, Neo Inertia, Borsos Lőrinc's exhibition, embodies a sensual conceptualism where Boris Groys’ program of "de-design" and "de-functionalization" merges with the DIY aesthetics of arte povera and the spontaneous energies of punk. Quick sketches and fanciful doodles: art for oneself, not foreign hurdles.

Graphic design: Áron Lődi