A new online street-art exhibition shows Budapest landmarks turning into colourful animations, where sights are altered through vivid visions by graphic artists. The iconic Little Princess statue on the Danube Promenade gets a futuristic twist, while the Elizabeth Lookout Tower atop János Hill appears as if it was a torn-out page from a book of fairy tales. But transformed sights also include lesser-known attractions, such as Ponty utca at the base of Castle District and Mandl House, one of the city’s narrowest buildings. High-quality photos of the featured scenes are juxtaposed with each graphic.
“The city ignites creativity and urges artists to reflect and leave a statement,” says the Budapest Transitions website, a showcase of urban photographs presented alongside matching drawings. For this project, Hungarian photographer Barnie snapped eight major and less-obvious landmarks.
Then applying the same angle and settings, four of the city’s adept graphic artists recreated the captured attractions in the form of drawings. Adjusting the slider placed on each pair of images, users can set the desired proportion revealed for every combination.
The Franz Liszt Music Academy is surrounded by musical notes on the illusionary design by László ‘Nikon One’ Brunszkó, an influential artist in the international graffiti and street-art scene.
For another pairing, sedate Japanese Garden on Margaret Island is pictured as a manga drawing, adding a warrior, an underwater dragon and a robotic duck to the peaceful scenes. This is how the world is seen by Zsolt Varga Sekond, an award-winning art director.
Meanwhile, Buda’s riverfront Mandl House, considered the city’s slimmest building, has been given limbs by Zsófia Fenyvesi, the brains behind the Phylia Studio design workshop.
Having depicted the Danube Promenade as a blue-hued fantasy land, illustrator Tamás Ál also turned an iconic Memento Park sculpture into a ghostly phenomenon. Ál’s geometric designs have been appearing on fashionable YKRA bags, in international anthologies and even in the Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
