​László Ormay

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László Ormay’s practice is grounded in a sustained investigation of drawing and painting as durational processes. Working across works on paper, monochrome drawing, painting, and language-based work, he constructs surfaces through the gradual accumulation of marks - lines, perforations, and tonal fields - each registering a discrete moment of attention.

At the centre of the practice is drawing, approached not as preparation but as a primary conceptual field. Repetition operates as both method and structure. Through the disciplined accumulation of gestures, the surface becomes a record of time, where the image emerges through duration rather than depiction. The works do not represent time; they are formed by it.

This concern situates Ormay’s work within a lineage of artists who have treated time as a structuring principle, including Roman Opalka and On Kawara. Unlike these precedents, however, Ormay’s work remains closely tied to material conditions. The mark retains its physical presence, and the surface registers the resistance of the medium.

A parallel enquiry unfolds within the paintings. Working within restrained palettes, often monochrome, Ormay approaches painting as a self-referential medium. Surface, light, and material presence become the primary concerns. Subtle shifts in tone and texture emerge slowly, requiring sustained attention. In this context, painting operates less as image and more as object.

Across both drawing and painting, reduction functions as a means of intensification. By limiting the visual vocabulary, the works heighten perception, aligning them with a contemplative tradition of abstraction associated with artists such as Agnes Martin. The works resist immediacy, unfolding instead through extended viewing.

Running through the practice is an engagement with the historical tradition of vanitas. Rather than employing overt symbolism, Ormay internalises this concern within process. The repeated mark becomes a measure of time, and the completed surface holds the accumulation of its making. In this way, the work operates as a contemporary memento mori, where duration itself becomes the subject.

This enquiry extends into Ormay’s language-based works, where statements are presented as objects. Texts such as This Is a Work of Art and The Best Artist Is the Dead Artist adopt a declarative form while destabilising their own authority. Removed from context and framed as artworks, these statements shift from communication to condition, exposing the structures through which meaning and value are produced.

Ormay’s practice has developed across Europe and New Zealand, encompassing study in Hungary and Germany, a sustained period of work in London, and a current studio based in Mapua. This trajectory reflects a movement between institutional contexts, from academic frameworks to commercial and independent practice.

Across all bodies of work, Ormay maintains a consistent position: that drawing and painting can function as structures of time. Through repetition, reduction, and material engagement, the works propose a mode of practice - and viewing - grounded in duration, attention, and the persistence of the mark.