Trying to define, trying to describe. The time she spends on describing is built in the pictures. She starts to speak about the time she spends on the process also. The objects disintegrate into story fragments. The stories are pictures. The pictures and the action of painting is a tool for her to put her ideas into shapes. As they get a shape they do not only become text, because she uses objects. But they are also not mere paintings, because they show us words. The words she uses are not speaking only about creating pictures - as you would think for the first glance -, but they are a form of reflection. This self-reflection is not only a way of speaking but it is also the action of confronting herself with her present state. The form of confronting is confession. The aim of a confession is to reveal some secrets, just as the aim of denial is to give statements. If we understand the irony. But irony is not an aim, it is only a station. You need a little rest in your getaway. But neither getting away is her aim, it is only a form of being between two states. Being in between is a way of waiting for something. While waiting, one perceives time if she can find a purpose that is not attached to time. Painting pictures is a form of waiting. Painting is diverse. The painting we just have described is: waiting, confronting, circumscription.
András Szücs
Some of these works were created at K.A.I.R. and were exhibited at Šopa Gallery’s studio space. The residency was supported by Slovak Arts Council.
‘On other planets and moons of our solar system you cannot find any traces of life. Life only exists on Earth. The difference is immense.’
‘There is the sand.
There is the secret.
There is the sand. God digs. Beneath the sand God lays a dream:
God creates the Sphinx so that the desert will be part of his Creation. Perhaps God also has development projects for some future time. This is not something that the Sphinx will know. God has just invented time. God puts the Sphinx in the desert and says to him: wait. The Sphinx peopled the desert with a millions of forms of awaiting, and filled the burning and empty air with a multitude of mirages in the form of the one who would come at the end of the waiting. The sun never fell without the Sphinx having planned another possible reception for the one who, in the end would come talk to him. The Sphinx did not know who would come, but he sensed vaguely that there was only room for one in a desert because how could his questions, his dreams and his phantoms live if by chance someone other than he should dare to fill the sky and the sand? There would be war and noise. And finally death which is no longer in time. The Sphinx knows no noise. But when it occurs to him that his creatures could encounter others, the pain drives his heart all the way to his eyes, he weeps blood and it resembles a rain of dead children.
Here God awakens. He buries his dream under the sand. Desert himself.’
Hélène Cixous
installation view at Šopa Gallery, Košice
‘someone is speaking. on the ground. who the hell is speaking? a big pile of. up. the thought. but. there’s no. is there no? do you want it to be, don’t you?
I feel ashamed. and you don’t want to be, am I right?’
The two tiny paintings are copies of Mother with Two Children by Gustav Klimt (1909/1910) and Father with Two Children by Ilka Gedő (1969/1970).
