War in Progress

Tibor Babos

War Collection

Paradox Constructivism / Constructive Unrealism

2023

60 x 50 cm (23.6 in x 19.6 in)

Oil on 3D+ Canvas

Budapest

In Private Collection

War in Progress is Tibor Babos’s starkest philosophical meditation on conflict—an unflinching visual theorem stripped of ornament, stripped of heroes, stripped even of the event itself. What remains is the structure of violence in its purest form: incursion, division, disruption. Rendered with a radical reductionism that is both aesthetic and ethical, Babos captures war not as spectacle or narrative but as architecture—a confrontation of forms. Two ivory-white textured squares, set within a diagonal shadow geometry, evoke both the divine and the devastating, suspended in an ambiguous theater of aggression and restraint.

The painting’s title, War in Progress, situates the work in a permanent present tense. There is no resolution, no aftermath—only an ongoing dynamic of occupation and reaction. By eliminating all figuration, Babos universalizes his subject: this is not a war, but war itself. The pale, impastoed squares seem sacred at first glance—perhaps reliquaries or totems of belief—but their positioning within opposing fields of light and darkness signals a collision of absolute convictions. Each form believes itself pure; each casts a shadow of consequence.

Babos’s geometric field is divided by a sharp diagonal, a force vector that cuts across the canvas and continues onto the edge of the 3D+ structure—a gesture that denies the self-containment of the image and insists on the continuation of conflict beyond frame, beyond time. The black and silver-gray fields read as zones of influence, territorial demarcations, ideological binaries—yet their gradients and layering reject simplistic moral distinctions. Light does not equal right; shadow does not equal wrong. The diagonals intersect, not mirror. This is not balance—it is tension.

The ivory squares, while formally identical, are uniquely marred. Their thick, violently textured surfaces erupt from the otherwise smooth background like scars or ruins—palpable reminders that all participants in war are altered, disfigured, implicated. Their materiality matters: built from seven distinct layers of oil over more than a year of drying cycles, their creation mirrors the long, patient construction of conflict itself. Even their physical elevation from the canvas suggests hierarchy, dominance, or resistance—but Babos leaves the meaning unresolved. Like war, they demand interpretation but refuse certainty.

War in Progress is a defining work of Babos’s Paradox Constructivism, where formal rigor collides with philosophical ambiguity. Echoes of Suprematism, Judd’s minimal objecthood, or even Serra’s monumentality are present, but Babos disrupts these traditions by reintroducing narrative consequence into abstract structure. His work contains moral charge without didacticism. It is minimalism not as aesthetic quietude, but as a stage for metaphysical noise.

In the broader War Collection, this piece operates as a conceptual keystone. Later works may explore causality (Casus Belli) or escalation (Harc), but War in Progress remains the clearest abstraction of conflict’s eternal mechanics. Its spatial logic is cold, calculated—almost bureaucratic. And yet, within that logic lies its horror: the suggestion that violence can be planned, symmetrical, even elegant.

Curatorially, the piece commands austere exhibition. It should be lit from a sharp side angle to emphasize the relief of the ivory textures and the seamless continuation of the geometry across the canvas’s sculptural edges. Its ideal setting is contemplative, institutional, perhaps accompanied by archival material, text fragments, or ambient sound—anything that might echo the dissonance between structure and suffering. It is at home in collections or shows exploring propaganda, the aesthetics of power, or the abstraction of ideology.

Ultimately, War in Progress is not just an image of war—it is a machine for thinking about war. Silent, severe, and metaphysically loaded, it transforms the viewer into a witness of structure itself. Babos offers no heroes, no casualties, no spectacle—only the diagram of destruction. And that, perhaps, is the most haunting image of all.