GYOR.- What happens when an artist voluntarily relinquishes full control over the outcome? Letting Do seeks to answer this question: it selects works that have been created in the course of the creative process by deliberately or deliberate outsourcing of the work. External, calculated influences may be the involvement of another artist in the realisation of a work, reflection as a modifying framework, or the involvement of artificial intelligence. Another recurring theme of the Letting Do duo exhibition is work, production, manufacturing, its historical and industrial context, and the problem of the artist as producer. This frame of reference also reflects the industrial scale of the Torula space and the original factory function of the building. The exhibition includes works mainly from the second half of the decade, as well as works made specifically for the occasion. The comparative character of the duo exhibition: the two invited exhibitors, Andreas FOGARASI (1977) and Adrienn Mária KISS (1978), are stylistically different at close range, but share a common intersection in their creative working methods. On this basis, the exhibition is structured in four major units, groups of works.
Adrienn Mária KISS, Torula's artist-in-residence and the present master project of Adrienn KISS, who is completing her doctoral programme at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, rearranges her canvases, which have been available in standard, prefabricated form for the past years, but have accumulated in large quantities, this time into a spatially tailored, overly stretched, sprawling installation (Shifting River). The small-format images draw our attention to the economic context behind studio work (the availability of raw materials, the economics of experimental studio by-products and the cost of storing works) and to the instantaneous, commodified artistic expression offered in everyday life. KISS does not incorporate these materials into her art as an object of moralising critique, but treats everyday experience as an integral element of constantly active, fiddling creative experimentation. This practice of extracting and re-framing from the sphere of the everyday reminds us of FOGARASI's method of collecting and combining collage (see Nine Buildings, Stripped Architectural Objects or the Envelop series, also invited to Torula).
The relationship between the part and the whole: that is, the work can also be examined from the perspective of the duality of a small-format image that is valid in itself and the pattern, the backdrop, that is organised in a conveyor-belt-like manner from the multiplicity of these. (This visual strategy may also be familiar from KISS's similarly painting-focused installation presented at the Ludwig Museum in 2021.)
KISS has also incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into the creation of the four-channel animation (Machine Impressions), using it in a humorous, self-entertaining way that is different from the way it is used in mainstream visual culture. Some of the basic frames of the cinematic work are made up of analogue and then digitised works by Adrienn Mária KISS, while the so-called generative imaging process outsourced to AI fills in the "gaps" in between. In contrast to the above, the production of visual output here is not hierarchical (part-part) but juxtapositional (non-hierarchical, linear), i.e. the AI, guided by the aesthetic criteria of the artist and the artist, the machine, complementing each other, creates a new visual quality. The algorithmic playing field is set according to the same creative guidelines as the hundreds of items of visual data produced by KISS provide the initial corpus, the basic data set, for the upgraded AI to generate further images. This creates a complementary relationship between classical image-making processes and the AI artist-driven, art-driven, machine-generated images within a defined framework.
FOGARASI's Envelop series is linked to the concept of production in several ways. Thematically, on the one hand, he adopts the pages of the series of graphic works from the Great Socialist Construction and Images from the Life of Hungarian Transport and Telecommunications of the 1960s, which, as a prelude to the new economic mechanism, depict the society under construction and its physical, urban spaces (from apartment buildings to energy and knowledge production facilities) through the large-scale reproduction of copperplate engravings. On the other hand, the use of materials: the metal-paper-glass triad also gives the objects an industrial character. Last but not least, his abstract, open geometric forms - like the timeless, bomb-proof envelopes of postcards to be preserved for posterity - recall the successive stages of folding as a series of variations. This latter interpretation may also draw our attention to the role of imaging processes, especially technical media, in the optimisation of work processes and mass production in the 20th century. The appropriation-based approach of the Envelop series is taken further in the Stamps object group, the first in the exhibition, which makes use of the magnification of the X motif that marks the location of the character stamp.
A classic historical example of the illustrative, documentary social function of art (as we have seen in the case of the etchings that were the starting point for Envelop) is the cityscape, the panorama. In this case, too, FOGARASI takes as his starting point the combination of a given geometric body (cylinder) and a choice of material (mirror foil) that fits it in a meaningful way (Mirror Ring). This time, the work, which was previously made in a similar format at the invitation of the Bratislava City Gallery, takes advantage of the architectural features of the site to adapt to the concrete arches of the former tanks holding the yeast, a by-product of the brewing process. This larger work, made in 2015, was complemented two years later by drawings by Peter Bartoš and digital photographic prints documenting the construction works under Bratislava Castle, providing a vision of the clash between the historic cityscape and late capitalist unregulated investments. Minimal visual intervention, as a reflection of the local landscape, is also reflected in the large-scale glass surfaces that filter natural light and characteristically define the gallery space, as well as in the duality of the mirror foil and the visitor. In this way, the internal logic of the work, which links space and ordered chance as calculated reflections, is linked to KISS's creative method, also externalised as an external agent - AI's algorithm.
Torula, Győr
Andreas Fogarasi & Adrienn Mária Kiss: Letting Do
Thursdays and Fridays
June 25th, 2023 - July 29th, 2023
