Cashflow

Tibor Babos

Midtown Collection

Paradox Constructivism / Constructive Unrealism

2022

60 x 50 cm (23.6 x 19.6 in)

Oil on 3D+ Canvas

Budapest

In Private Collection

Tibor Babos’s Cashflow is a structural meditation on the invisible rhythms of capital, rendered with the geometric clarity and philosophical tension that define the Midtown Collection. Inspired by the architecture of financial systems—especially those embedded in New York’s urban logic—the painting collapses economic theory, existential uncertainty, and visual paradox into a single, distilled form.

At the center is a stepped structure, diagonally aligned and rendered in a textured ochre-gold outline. It appears simultaneously as a stairway, a corridor, and a scaffold—a dual-directional form that invites conflicting readings: ascent or descent, growth or collapse. Its impossible geometry captures the recursive, often contradictory flow of capital. Each block seems to hover between solidity and emptiness, between being a container and a void. This structure floats atop a band of dark, atmospheric black, suggesting a kind of financial undertow: the unseen mechanisms—algorithmic, institutional, psychological—that shape and absorb monetary movement.

The painting’s title, Cashflow, anchors it in financial discourse but leaves the tone open—neither celebratory nor cynical. What emerges instead is a composed ambiguity. The golden outline evokes both aspiration and illusion: the shine of prosperity and the fragility of its architecture. Beneath it, the field of muted silver-gray evokes neutrality and detachment, functioning as a conceptual ground plane where abstraction replaces personal narrative. This is a city of systems, not stories.

Materially, the work is executed with the rigorous process that defines Babos’s 3D+ technique. Multiple layers of oil pigment, laid down across months, produce a subtle tension between the flatness of the background and the texture of the central form. Areas of abrasion, drag, and visible underpainting signal that the piece was built—not simply painted—mirroring the constructed nature of economic infrastructure itself. The palette is intentionally limited: metallic gray, oxidized gold, and ashen black, chosen not for vibrancy but for their tonal resonance and systemic coolness.

In formal terms, Cashflow draws on the precision of Constructivism and the austerity of Minimalism, but Babos destabilizes those influences with painterly disruptions. His use of impossible perspective echoes the spatial puzzles of Escher, yet the texture—scumbled, cracked, interrupted—grounds the image in material truth. The system is flawed. The steps don’t fully align. Shadows fall where they shouldn’t. Order teeters on the edge of entropy.

Philosophically, the work asks: What is the structure of value? Is cash flow a ladder, a loop, or a trap? And where does the individual stand in relation to systems that are designed to appear neutral but are often deeply coded with volatility, exclusion, and fragility? In this sense, the painting belongs not only to the vocabulary of finance but to the larger inquiry of Constructive Unrealism—where illusion reveals truth, and precision gives way to doubt.

As a curatorial object, Cashflow is as adaptable as it is potent. It commands presence in exhibitions exploring systems, finance, abstraction, or power. Its quiet authority is amplified by directional lighting, which enhances the sculptural relief of the staircase and the micro-variations in surface texture. Whether shown in a private collection or public installation, the painting resists passive viewing. It invites analytical inspection, yes—but also a recognition that what seems stable may be designed to shift.

In the context of Babos’s wider practice, Cashflow serves as a crystalline articulation of his visual and philosophical ethos. It transforms the abstraction of capital into a concrete visual form, then cracks that form open. In doing so, it captures the deeper truth of urban finance: that structure is never neutral, and that movement—like meaning—is always up for negotiation.