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in focus: Dániel Karsai
Citation preview
‘I do not merely
want to paint
something,
but as if creating it
for the first time.”
Dániel Karsai
dovin
Dániel Karsai: The White of the Teeth 11 Jan - 27 Febr 2013Szilvi Német essay - Gergely Ligetfalvi: Primarily PaintingPortrait of a young artist
2013 / I. vol.
DÁNIEL KARSAI
THE WHITE OF THE TEETH
CURATED BY SZILVI NÉMET
11 JAN - 27 FEB 2013
WWW.DOVINGALLERY.COM
’05/11 ‘09 ‘13 ’12
’09’11 ’10
’08
HUNGARIAN ACADEMYOF FINE ARTS, PAINTING
BUDAPEST
ACCADEMIA DI BELLEARTI DI BRERA, MILANO
THE WHITE OF THE TEETHDOVIN, BUDAPEST
ART MARKET BUDAPESTART COLOGNE, KÖLN
ART PARIS, PARIS
ARTCAMPF AT ELNÖK STREET, BPGESTALT, GROUP, DOVIN, BP
FRESH 11, KOGART, BPDIPLOMA SHOW, ACADEMY, BPSEDUCTION OF BEAUTIFUL ART
GALERIE STEPHAN STUMPF, MÜNCHEN
VILLA LITTA, SELECTED SHOW OF ERASMUS STUDENTS,
MILANO
20 YEARS OF CHANGE, FRISS GALLERY, BPCOLLEGIUM HUNGARICUM, BERLIN
HUNGARIAN INSTITUTE, PARISCOLLEGIUM HUNGARICUM, VIENNA
ARTISTS AND MANAGERS, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BP
BUDAPEST ART EXPO, SZENTENDRE
&
DÁNIELKARSAI
CV
Today our hunger for images stretches to a level, where the longing for pictural contents is conditioned by our behavioral status: we both tend to produce and digest pictures, not to speak about the most actively performed mediating-sharing phenomenon. As the One, whose brain capacity allows the visual manifestation of a given thought grabs the whole process from the most tiresome part...The painting versus photography dilemma nowadays seems to have arrived at a ‘game over’ stage, as it has gradually loosened its edges over the hundreds of years, while the category-killing attitude called interdisciplinarity of postmodern theory gave a final kick. Although the long history of the two media in contra postition maintains some overtone. When touching down on questions of representation, the oldtimer academy (running a Fight Club in the verbal field) argued for the pro effects of developing technology (we finally got to know the position of horses’ feet when galloping), but discovered the contras (overdemocratization of the media, artwork losing its aura) of the same specific gravity.
Essay.Painting.
When the millenium closer to us has assisted the popularization of what-I-dont-photograph-does-not-exist lifestyle, now the web2 technology opens wide the window-sashes in front of our virtual eye, for which the world is no longer conveyed through canvas frames, but monitors ad primum. In these circumstances the issues on origin and originality above all came into discourse. If today (with the détournement of the Foucault slogan) “there is nothing that exist out of it” , with other words we can forget about tabula rasa once the ON button was pressed, it is still refreshing to see liberating gestures that come by head. In the hope for the experience-wasting contemporary manner to re-open to more dimensions, there is something that plays in polyphonia (and cathode-ray-free).
Szilvi Német
# Cannibal# Own lake# Trophy# Trap# Runaway# Magazine
“Tomorrow already? I’m not sure I can get myself together...” - says the young painter
a couple of minutes before the opening of his first solo show, when I ask him about my
visit to his studio.However, we soon manage to agree on the time. His fears prove
unfounded, but this is what I expected from Dániel Karsai anyway: he is an artist who
spent each and every afternoon developing his drawing skills already in secondary
school.
Soft expressivity, dissolving heads and surrealistic objects.When painting is
primary. Analysis of a promising talent of the youngest generation.
In the spacious halls of his studio, located in an industrial building, there is plenty of room for his large paintings; from his university years on, Karsai has been filling canvases of at least a square meter in size with his surrealistic paintings of enigmatic scenes and often sinister atmospheres. His pictures show human figures with blurred contours, surrounded by sets of objects whose relationship to each other is inexplicable. Heads reduced to mere patches are stripped down to an animalistic degree , or blurred beyong recognition. We see situations where the human figures and the objects represent equalvalues. When the elaboration of the details is more closely inspected, one may see that what at first appears to be figurative tends to dissolve into a blurred memory.
The techniques of the purely painterly predominate: there are impasto brush-strokes and spots of colour in restrained pastels.Although th argument that obscurity may better evoke the feeling of the sublime and of fear is well known from as early as Edmund Burke‘s 18th-century aesthetics, Karsai’s pictures never evoke horrific effects. “Of course, there are certain references of this kind, as in case of titles such as Target, Trap, The Catch, Hostage or Accident. However, for me these are rather the means of creating suspense. Some kind of tension forms in the work, and I solve this internal drama, I overwrite it, answer it or highlight it. But my works never have a strong dramaturgy or narrative - the juxtaposition of incongruous elements would make that impossible”, he says.
We quickly eliminate another oncept applied mistakenly - in my opinion - to his work: that of its supposedly dreamlike quality. “Dreams come up again and again when my works are discussed, but that is not my fault. I guess this is inevitable when someone paints such heterogeneous object ensembles. What matters most for me, however, is primarily painting. If you see a guy standing in front of a metal box in my picture, that does not mean anything other than a guy standing in front of a metal box. The way you formulate it must be strong enough to make a stand by itself. I try to make the formulation of the object and the scene as complex as if I did not merely want to paint it, but as if I was creating it for the first time. The characteristic situations must become more than the things themselves - ideally they must turn into some kind of a sign, of which painting itself is the meaning.” Representation does not play any role in the making of these pictures. “The picture - he explains - shapes itself. I do all the work, I use only my head, I don’t even use photos, I don’t make sketches. What matters most is the present moment.”
As a result of Karsai’s use of colour, blurred images and his uncertain, patchy surfaces one may get the impression of looking at enlarged watercolours. Karsai’s habit of often leaving broad areas uncovered also add to this effect. After my visit to his studio, I walked back to the gallery in the city. One can see the exhibition through the huge ground-floor windows of Dovin Gallery even at night, from the street. That was when I actually realised how much these unpainted surfaces of the canvas glow in the dark. When I asked Karsai about these spots during our conversations in the studio, he said they were “pieces of evidence”. “I like to see that a work was really made with one’s own hands. It is good to see that this used to be an empty canvas on which a picture was constructed. It is important to remember the white canvas that I actually smear and soil when I ‘inhabit’ it during the painting process. It reminds me to handle it with care, though one should not be excessively careful.”in: FlashArtHungary 2013
If You See a GuyStanding In Front of a Metal BoxThat Does Not Mean AnythingElse Than a Guy Standing In Front of a Metal Box
The anima)on video for the track Smother in fog a4ributed to Bori Péterfy & Love Band was made by special watercolour technics. The paperboard got a ground coat of acrylic paint on which I have put other layers with watercolour. This la4er surface is easily removable, therefore what I paint above the acryl is transformable. We have made snapshots of each of these transforam)ons with a digital camera.On the very first picture of the video you see a guy around whom the his whole surrounding is just geHng formulated step by step (the tree, grass or pavement), all happening in synchron with the rhythm of the music. The background stretches the full size of the image, in front of which the figure is composed to stand in the middle. The background is ar)culated with wide, horizontal brush-‐work.The deeds of the main character and the processes he undergoes are in harmony with the lyrics plus reflects the musical happenings. The text of the song is about a break-‐up, and about the seclusion that denies to think twice about the decision to give an end to the love story. Each scenes in the anima)on are episodes that drama)ze and visually express this process and its effects. Just to give some example..The line “don’t bother to turn to me whatever you have, there are just the four walls listening to you” appears in my video quite concretely, when the character simultaneously start to cry and vomit. This reflects to the possibly outspoken but vain expressions that fills up emo)onally, for its visual transcrip)on I have used a concete pedestal constructed by the tears and vomit referring to the four walls in the lyrics. AWer, the main character trows away a spherical object that a4racts the viewer’s a4en)on to the leW part of the image at the very moment when it comes “or simply smother in fog”.
Smother in Fog or a Dead End of a Wannabe Love Story (Track 06 on Péterfy Bory&Love Band’s latest White Night album)
The cloud exploding at his head fills up gradually the whole pictural space.There come the mountains then, emerging smoothly from the dark background, appearing amongst the fog that enriches while the music reaches its peak. Tiny colourful spots are moving, varying and flickering un)l they get darkened, and finally full black. The melody reaches its zenith, most of the instrumental elements step in at this point in the music. AWerwards the fog alters into a black dollop in which some coulourful spots s)ll keep on gli4ering, but the dollop covers up all.From the so forming dark surface a figure is constructed again. He stands straddle-‐legged and bows the head. His bowing is con)nuous un)l a new character comes out from his back that takes the place of the former one, now he takes the posi)on of the upper body. This refigura)on keeps on going un)l a dog or a horse-‐like figure appears and takes the place of the upper body. The last verse of the song speaks about “if it were only you and me on an island in the middle of the ocean, I would not love you neither”, that give unexpected, firm closure to all. The last character cracks up and falls down, only the lower part of the body stays on the image.The newer and newer appearances shows up the vanity of changing the disguises, the “I would not love you neither” that we hear out from the song, closes the possibili)es.