Burning Magnet:
A defining experience of my childhood in the village was that we heated up a roof tile by making a ”bomb” based on my brother’s idea with the guys next door. Even though the handful of 6-8-year-old boys stomped and stomped in vain, they could not put out the fire in the field, our parents rushed to our aid. Later, as a teenager, as soon as my brother and I saw smoke in the nearby forest, we immediately rushed to the site and extinguished the fire line in front of the field in front of the upper plot boundary, thereby preventing the destruction of a nearby giant field and forest. The revenge we did for our childhood prank meant more than the praise of the firefighters who arrived. In this video, everything happens in reverse, a slow-motion story unfolds upside down and backwards, at the end of which it turns out that a match or a spark is enough to cause a catastrophe. This is true for forest fires caused by global warming, but also for the increasingly frequent wars in our neighborhood and around the world. This video does not want to make the events unhappened, but instead wants to heal the wounds or foresee the expected consequences of our actions.
The magnetic horseshoe, which attracts wood made of wood, heralds the breakdown of proportions and balances. With my works, I create a unique, sovereign microcosm where unreal laws prevail.
About:
”A member of the new generation of Szentendre artists. He started out as painter and sculptor, later he turned to media-based art.
The common idea behind his artworks is the closeness of nature, or, conversely, the alienation from it. His wooden statues may allude to self-destruction – that means, to the inconsiderate elimination of our environment –, but these allusions are never direct. His objects get new functions by a change of the roles of the different materials and instruments. He recreates and reinterprets, disintegrates and rebuilds, calls into question accepted roles and overwrites rigid clichés. His sculptures are exact diagnoses for the off-the-balance system of relations of our times. The pin that is bored into the wall, the wooden magnet that attracts wood, a saw that floats on the water or slices a hill, an axe that splits cut-up wood are all telling about the disorder of scales and balances. His works constitute a unique, sovereign microcosm, governed by irreal rules. His artworks have two poles, just like his symbolic horseshoe magnet, but his aim is not to widen the antagonism between the two poles but to narrow it.”
Katalin Kopin arthistorian
Education:
2003–2008 Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Conservator Department – Applied arts objects conservator, specialized for siliceous objects
2004–2005 Art Preservation Assistant Training Course, Budapest
2000–2002 Decorator School
Last five solo exhibitions:
2014 PUNISH/You, Us and Them (with Péter Rizmayer), Latarka Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
2017 Meteor and minute catastrophes (with Rizmayer Péter), Czóbel Gallery, Szentendre, Hungary
2019 Tree-saw, Art Capital, Szentendre, Hungary
2023 We mow with matches, Shigishoara, Romania
2023 Follyart, Badacsonyörs, Folly Arborethum, Hungary
Last five group exhibitions
2018 Rebirth, Tawn Hall Gallery, Szentendre, Hungary
2019 Green border, Lajos Vajda Gallery, Szentendre, Hungary
2023 Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, Italy
2023 Premio Combat Prize, Livorno, Italy
2023 Stigma, Studio Vajda Lajos, Szentendre, Hungary
Awards and nomitaions:
2019 Shanghai / F@IMP 2.0 festival, Silver Award / I’m from Hungary c. short movie
2019 Art Capital / Winner of the Public Art competition
2023 Arte Laguna Prize / Land Art / finalist
2023 Premio Combat Prize / Video Art / finalist
2024 Arte Laguna Prize / Sculptures and installations /