Jรกnos Korodi
motion_picture _ a n o n y m o u s
L a n d s c a p e
Jรกnos Korodi
motion_picture
Jรกnos Korodi
motion_picture _ a n o n y m o u s
1 2
30 27
2016 2016
ArtWorks, Trenton, NJ
L a n d s c a p e
© János Korodi, 2016 Photo © Andrew Wilkinson, 2016 Text © Adele Eisenstein, 2016
Edited by Adele Eisenstein Design by Hanga Máthé
When I first met Janos, he was painting fragments of carpets, which were patterns representing the reality that surrounded their weavers, of war and terror in the Middle East – thus transforming a three-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional image, to then be placed into a three-dimensional space, becoming an integral part of it. Janos transformed these objects into virtual images – of a reality mediated through multiple layers of time and place. Janos was also painting monumental canvases of deconstructed spatial constructions, so large that they pulled the viewer into the space of the painting, in a way that was almost disorienting. His grand-scale work entitled Antispace deconstructed spatial constructions so that all of the planes of the space shifted into one. His larger than life-size work entitled Demolition depicts interior and exterior space in the same plane, as if all dimensions are compressed. The viewer can feel buried under the weight of the construction, at the same time that she can fly up to the sky. When Janos first came to New York a few years ago, he continued his series of cityscapes, but now that he has been shifting his home base for an extended period of time, without his stable base in Budapest, those landscapes have also deconstructed. He now calls those landscapes “anonymous”. Janos has been exploring what he calls the Genus loci – or the spirit of a place – but in fact, while the pictures take us through who knows how many landscapes, it is the spirit that is continuous throughout, that is the common thread in this string of antiplaces, or non-places – an absence of place, or a multitude of place – This is a Genus loci – or spirit – of anti-place - It is the place that is in motion, in Perpetuum Mobile. Korodi is a virtual Kerouac of the 21st century, taking us On the Road, on a journey in-between – a voyage of interstices. It is a journey between worlds, and he is taking us along for the ride, allowing us to experience our own landscapes together with him, see through his eyes our own anonymous highways – much like the NJ Turnpike, for instance – our own slices of Americana. In fact, as we watch out the windshield with his eyes, they are seeing through virtual Google glasses. This is a world that is at the border between the real and the virtual, based on real spaces photographed in 360-degree panoramic views through Google Street View. Views that are in motion, capturing space and place as it moves, and as it moves us.
Korodi has remained a painter of the traditional old school, keeping one foot in tradition, painting on traditional carriers, like canvas and wood panels. But he uses new methods, new techniques, uncustomary materials, new motifs. These motifs and gestures are taken from the realms of video, film, videogames, artificial intelligence. His other foot has stepped into the ways of the “New World” – of the 21st century, or maybe even beyond – the world of the virtual – of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, of the poststructuralism of Baudrillard. We are travelling with Korodi at the speed of sound, or the speed of light. He has managed to simulate motion and the sensation of time passing. We feel the velocity – through his two-dimensional, flat surfaces – we can see the places in motion around us, and we can also feel the passing of time. Especially his paintings on wood, that preserve and feature its origins in nature, highlighting the grain of the tree – showing its age, in its pattern of rings, its traces that show events over time. He calls these Motion Pictures – and they capture motion in a still image. They capture what is already elsewhere. They capture the trace of what was there, has been there – maybe even of what is yet to come. This is a journey as film. Not a film-strip, or a static film-frame, plucked out of a flow. This is film, as it spools through the projector – as it is still in motion. With bands of color flowing through a prism. Light in motion – and Time stood still. He works in between techniques of abstraction – expressing figuration. Echoing Gerhard Richter’s use of the squeegee to spread pigments over the surface, to disturb and distort. His narratives are non-concrete, so the author gives only the hints of them – and it is up to the viewer to complete them with her own imagination, her own memory. Like jigsaw puzzles with pieces missing. In a way that even alludes to Francis Bacon’s dramatic portraits in an “empty room”, his paintings are a kind of visual synecdoche – or simultaneous understanding, in which a part stands in for the whole – allowing us in our own minds to fill in the gaps, and comprehend the whole, almost a bit like when with an optical illusion, we close one eye, or lead our finger away from our nose, in looking at something – and our mind fills in the parts that are not there. As Korodi continues to explore his new American landscape, we should welcome his signposts and directions, so that we can trace our own way. Welcome to America, Janos!
Adele Eisenstein, NY/NJ, 01–30–2016
SH2_sunset 11"× 15" | silkscreen print | 2004 SH1_metro
11"× 15" | silkscreen print | 2004
“I have had the feeling for some time that this silkscreen diptych made in 2004, mark the transition in my work over the past 10-12 years. The first image being a cubic, static structure, is of the type that has informed my work for the past ten years. The second image foreshadows my ongoing “motion” series. I gradually abandoned the earlier architecture-inspired, cubic construction, it has been transformed into moving scenes, as in the past six years I have found myself on the road.”
p a i n t i n g s
motion picture_13
43"× 60" | pigment in acrylic on wood | 2015
motion picture_02
28"Ă— 40" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
motion picture_03
31,5"× 39 ⅜" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
>> motion picture_15
68"× 92" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion picture_08
32"Ă— 38" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
motion picture_07
28⅜"× 48⅜" | pigment in acrylic on wood | 2015
motion picture_06
28⅜"× 48⅜" | pigment in acrylic on wood | 2015
>> motion picture_12_(kingfisher)
68"× 92" | pigment in acrylic on wood | 2015
motion picture_16_(minerals in love)
43"Ă— 60" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion picture_17
43"Ă— 60" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion picture_04
32"× 38" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
>> motion picture_11_(пасмурки)
56"× 96" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
motion picture_01
31"Ă— 40" | pigment on velour paper mounted on canvas | 2015
motion picture_09
29,5"× 42,5" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
motion picture_10
29,5"× 42,5" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
motion picture_05
42"× 46" | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2015
>> motion picture_14
56"× 96" | pigment in acrylic on wood | 2015
s c r e e n p r i n t s
motion print_01
9"Ă— 13" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_02
11"Ă— 14" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_11
13"Ă— 20" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_12
12"Ă— 24" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_04
9.5"Ă— 16" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_06
16"Ă— 20" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_08
18"Ă— 30" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_03
20"Ă— 30" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_10
12"Ă— 23" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_05
13"Ă— 19" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_20
28"Ă— 52" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
>> motion print_07
10"Ă— 16" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
motion print_13–16
8"× 13.5" | silkscreen print | pigment in acrylic on canvas | 2016
Photo © Olivér Birta
motion_pictures
I was engaged for a long working period with creating static, building-like, painterly constructions and cityscapes: being somewhere. The theme was distilled slowly by the impact of seemingly insignificant public spaces exercise over all of us. I was observing the genius loci (the spirit of the place) that determines not only our physical, but also our spiritual environment; it manifests in architecture, painting and all art forms, and apparently sneaks into our virtual life too. I’ve been exploring how the genius loci influences an art piece (or its creator) first, then mapped the art object itself as a dominator of its milieu. The Poetics of Space – referring on Gaston Bachelard’s genius loci interpretation as the place of human daydreams for thousands of years – has recently brought a new stage to take into consideration: finding a haven in the virtual space. It is the same old human problem facing the same old problems of time, existence, being in transition in space, metaphorically between life and death. Virtual life has added a horizon of a new kind of matter-less world to our life, a domain of communication and of things that arise only from virtuality. The aesthetics of these objects erupt into our physical life constantly. We cannot recognize them, but new aesthetics are born from our everyday habits. Nevertheless, it happened before too, since prehistoric times, as all traditional art forms developed by transforming something matterlless into tangible reality. And these forms are available and are still credible media for transmitting and creating visual aesthetics, to express entire visions of our existence. I began to paint the series I call Motion Pictures in 2015, using Google Streetview as its primary base and unfailing cache, through which I explore the notion of place, nonplace, and transition, as mediated through technology: a static representation of our virtual world that simulates velocity. It also represents the constantly reshaping, although seemingly steady, genres of the culture of visual art we create, experience, and maintain (still life, portrait, nude, exterior, interior and genre painting), although motion extends to all of these, or at least distorts them. The type of images I develop are based on an algorithmic visual transformation of reality. When I compose a piece, the process is reversed: reincarnated in matter again, ending up on a gallery wall. Some images are on wood, the genuine pattern of which embodies time as a vertical still: the year-rings of a cutaway refer to the same impossible possibility of expressing motion in a static plane. The painterly experiment plays with this vertical entering in time. It explores the basic human eagerness for wandering, bringing up the allegory
of journey using a basic algorithmic effect (streetview) that helps to reach the goal of not only erasing the borders between abstract and representational painting, but also of making that problem totally irrelevant. While this type of image represents a representation, it does so using abstract painting’s gestures, shapes, vectors, and colors as segments, elements of the entire expression of “extra-reality”. The broad gestures quote Abstract Painting, but simultaneously stand for the narrative, the precise elements of a figural picture of motion. The paintings of the first series are anonymous landscapes in that they lack a specified location; they engage the viewer with a moving, ephemeral phase of a vision. The painting technique I have developed to pursue this vision borrows from silkscreen printing. The image is split into sections, and the fields of colors responsible for the final freshness are carefully prepared by masking with latex and other covering materials. Then the liquid paint – a mixture of a transparent medium (acrylic) and carefully chosen blend of pigment powders – is poured on and pulled with a squeegee or brushes as an act of momentum. This technique borrows from the oriental inktechnique painter’s method: while shaping the form, the artist focuses on every deliberate attack, which derives its core energy from the movement itself. I reduce the visual image into the fewest possible lines and color fields: just enough to cause form, space, and visceral movement. Every touch must be fully charged with meaning, and useless detail eliminated. In this way the process reveals the essence of being in motion, leaving the infinite landscape as our earthly connection behind. It captures the road, which is also the destination, in my eyes.
Janos Korodi, 2015-16
Photo Š Gala Derroisne