Brigitta Kocsis: #techboyz

VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY VERNON, BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

BRIGITTA KOCSIS · #TECHBOYZ

BRIGITTA KOCSIS #techboyz

Vernon Public Art Gallery March17 - May 18, 2022

Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3 www.vernonpublicartgallery.com 250.545.3173

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada March 17 - May 18, 2022 Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery Editor: Lubos Culen Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery Copy editing: Kelsie Balehowsky Front cover: #techboyz 2 (detail), 2022, oil on canvas, 54 x 72 in Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada ISBN 978-1-927407-67-7 Copyright © 2022 Vernon Public Art Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada.

Telephone: 250.545.3173 , website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by:

The artist acknowleges the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Executive Director’s Foreword · Dauna Kennedy

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#techboyz: Introduction · Lubos Culen

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Brigitta Kocsis - Tech Boys · Dr. Michael Boyce

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Artist Statement · Brigitta Kocsis

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Images of Works In the Exhibition

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Curriculum Vitae

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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD

The Vernon Public Art Gallery is eager to present the works of Brigitta Kocsis a Montreal based artist with a strong exhibition record both nationally and internationally. Born in Hungary, Kocsis pursued her education in the United Kingdom and Canada. This latest exhibition Kocsis focuses on figurative work depicting young adults in everyday situations.

Our guest writer for this publication and overview of this exhibition titled #Techboyz is Dr. Michael Boyce, a Montreal based arts writer. Boyce has an interest in the social production of culture and is recognized as an author of two published novels and various submissions for artist catalogues. Curator Lubos Culen has also provided an introductory essay for this publication.

I’d like to thank the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council and the Regional District of the North Okanagan for their contributions to the operations of the Vernon Public Art Gallery and our programs. These funds are vital to the production of exhibitions such as #Techboyz for the enjoyment of our community.

We hope you enjoy this publication and exhibition.

See you at the VPAG, Dauna Kennedy Executive Director

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#techboyz: INTRODUCTION

Brigitta Kocsis’ work focuses primarily on the portrayal of the human body situated in various environments, which range from descriptive to abstract. In her previous work, her focal point was on the description of predominantly female bodies in various states of nudity. The figures often feature various prosthesis, sometime believable, other times verging on cyborg-looking bodily adornments. Sometimes the figures are incomplete and lack a solidity of form which Kocsis then replaces with diagrammatic lines complementing the missing limbs. The figures are often depicted in groups and with expressions imbued with dystopia.

The bizarre groupings and activities are not overt, but the viewers’ associations inevitably apprehend a possible narrative, however unclear. The figures exist in close proximity to each other which suggest that perhaps staying close together results in the feeling of mutual help and security. The portrayal of nude figures inevitably implies the insecurity and the vulnerability of humans.

The environments that the figures occupy might be quite dense and oppressive; in other compositions the environments might be just suggested by the passages of intense colour. Despite the realistic modeling of human forms, Kocsis’ paint delivery is quite expressionistic in orchestration of fluid and dense passages of painted layers. The figures often confront the viewers with a straight-on gaze, which contributes to the feeling of intense drama, alienation and disconnection.

After relocating from Vancouver to Montreal, Kocsis embarked on the artistic journey which resulted in a slight shift in her mode of operation in her studio practice. As she describes, Kocsis wanted to do something different and depart from what had become a familiar manner of working, specifically the intersection of figure and cyborg dynamics in her painting. Her initial years in Montreal were quite intense in her pursuit of different art forms. She started producing abstract paintings, photography and started to write poetry. In 2020, Kocsis was awarded the prestigious Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship and started the residency at the Vermont Studio Centre in Johnson, Vermont. Unfortunately, she had to leave half way into the residency because of the then looming pandemic.

The current exhibition at the Vernon Public Art gallery titled #techboyz shifts slightly from the previous portrayal of the female body to a depiction of exclusively male figures. While Kocsis executes the male body in a loose realistic rendering, she is not striving for Renaissance perfection in modeling the human forms.

Her desire is to show that the works are paintings and their appearance is driven by the painting process with the layering of often incomplete passages of paint and gestural mark-making.

During the Covid19 pandemic restrictions in 2020, Kocsis went for repeated walks in her neighborhood dedicated to the observation of different environments and people and acquiring photographs for her source imagery. She would often pass by the software developer Ubisoft Montreal’s building and observed

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and photographed young information technology workers clustering together. The young technicians spoke different languages and came from diverse cultural backgrounds: Europeans, Middle Eastern, Africans and South Asians. The underlying concept of Kocsis’ exhibition is the portrayal of culturally disconnected persons and their desire to fit in our multicultural society.

The human condition is still the prevalent context of Kocsis’ new body of paintings with an equally strong undertone of dystopia. Kocsis’ push against what was comfortable in previous work led her to develop the body of works with silent narratives unfolding for the most part in dense environments. A slight departure from the previous works is the use of colour influenced by Japanese animations. In the current works the colours are keyed up to an almost neon-like appearance, which at once reference Pop culture, but also the artificiality of the human experience. Kocsis’ compositions are based on photographs which she uses for the initial stages, but once the compositions are more or less established, the further progress is then guided by the painting process.

In conclusion, the exhibition #techboyz is a visual investigation into the psychological aspects of the susceptible segment of young adult male workers trying to integrate into society. Kocsis’ paintings capture the psychological aspects of human existence and the human condition in a portrayal of vulnerability of male figures which are often in tight groupings and yet distanced from each other. The environments that the figures occupy are quite ambiguous and lack references to a concrete indoor or outdoor setting. They are intense and almost oppressive in their mass and the feeling of heaviness is compounded by intense artificial colours. Despite Kocsis’ emphasis on depictions of the human condition, the figuration is a theme of the exhibition. In contrast with the accurate modeling of human forms in her previous work, Kocsis’ figures in this exhibition are often slightly distorted and this fact contributes to the psychological tension between the viewer and the subject matter.

Lubos Culen Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery

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BRIGITTA KOCSIS - TECH BOYS

My work focuses on investigating the shifting concepts of the human body and its environment.

— Brigitta Kocsis1 The soft-faced tech boys, on a break, hanging out together, in repose. Getting air. Staring into space. A distance, out further than the surface limit of the screen that commands so much of their attention.

Where is the surface limit of these paintings? The flatter, more abstract they are, the more complex and compelling is the space in them.

Those faces! Radiant. All delicate, sublime.

These paintings are beautiful. Fantastic dreaming spaces. They draw you in, which is remarkable because their graphic sensibility frames the view of the flatness of the surface you are moving into. The layout, a wild but smooth, seductive. It’s like it’s saying, remember that this is an image, it’s a painting, it’s designed, and yet, look, for all of that, it enchants you in and it makes you dream that it is real. You are in with them.

These are young men — designers, compositors, painters, technicians — beautiful and stylish, resting like Olympic athletes of the creative mind. Their dreamy looks, express longing, perhaps worry or anxiety.

We are pulled towards them and towards perceiving, viewing them, and the painter of them, Brigitta, as rendering each other. Representing them as creators, and art as a question, a relationship to technology, technique, to sort out.

The cool tech boys. What is the strength of them, in them? Masters of technology technique. The conventions.

The traditions. The language. Their great effort. Their mad skills. Artistry and craft and commerce. A way of life. A way to make a living. They are earning it. Their break. Working long dedicated hours. Individual and group participation, contribution. The team and the auteur. The paintings of them are them.

These paintings are making views of space, environments, and the way that bodies are in them, are a part of them, forming, shaping them, with feeling, by how they’re being in them. And these painting also are views of making views, viewing a commanding vista.

Soft colours blend in with demarcating graphic outlines. Like, as if to trick your eye, even as it shows you how it’s done. Graphic design elements overlay surreal landscapes, which dissolve and shift horizons in your view. Expressionistic colours and subject renderings. The horizon of experience.

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The tech boys, looking at it, at each other, getting into it, into paying their attention to it, something someone somewhere different, off screen. Their looks are making it, while being made by it. Remade by it. The space, the place of them.

They are the environment. Moving. And emotional. Them and the paintings.

Their glances looking out from their preoccupations, looking vulnerable and dressed in a way like casual muted extroversion. She shows them. Their faces are illuminated by her sight of them.

What are they thinking? What are they dreaming of? What’s beyond the tasks at hand? The creation of a view. The creation of one’s self. Feminine and masculine. A dance of mutable signs. Playing.

Colours, shades of personality expression. Pale yellow. Sky blue. Green. Gold. Brown. Blonde. Light pigment texture. Pink skin, brown skin, pale white skin. Colours blend borders, boundaries made porous.

Boys diverse personality and coloured aspects. Clothing tight and loose. Lithe, soft curves, half-naked bodies. Hair of different lengths. Costumes. Black silver mesh. The young lions waiting to go back and kill it.

Shy introverts. Hidden faces glowing through a hooded darkness. The shroud of absorbed scrutiny. What is coming at them? Who is looking at them?

They’re let out, like as if they were contained. And they were. In, ostensibly, a studio, but also, an assembly line. Outside, they see the world again, perhaps like a painter.

She is painting them. What draws her to them?

Comrades sitting standing squatting. Lightly touching, holding on, familiarity. The gang, the team, the tribe.

Being like as if they’re waiting.

Can you t see into their mystery? Their secret longings, worries, and fatigue. Their need to look without command of where to look, the command to make the view, the scene. The joy of simply being out in it, a part of it, being made by it. To be looked at, for a change.

Who is looking, anyway, at whom? And where exactly are they?

She is asking you to see the mystery of what is coming through to you. Because of her expression, her style, her technique.

She is animating them in stillness. You can see them moving. Their expression. Her expression.

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The environment, the space, the place of making, their creation. Them and her. The studio. The study.

Wherever you go, when you are an artist, a maker, a creator, it is with you, it’s around you. The study.

They’re study. You are it. Looking at it and it’s looking back at you. You hope.

They are studying each other. The tech boys and the painter.

They have a regard for one another. Both are taking it all in. The view and the viewer and the viewing. A study in something. Something coming out, rendered, born onto a surface.

Made art by following a plan, schedule, map. The work and the working out of it. The working on it. The artistry. The practice, discipline. Crossing barriers. She is letting them flow through into supposed differences, distinctions. A dynamic balance. A measured approach. Doing what’s required, and knowing when it’s done right. Understanding balance. Understanding the economy. And when to go and get some air. To allow for background processing. The non-doing aspect of the doing, the creation. The creative process.

Let the magic happen. Let the image come alive, as if it isn’t you that’s doing it. To let it be as if it’s moving.

And be moved by it, the feeling of it. Meaningfully for you.

Confound the notion that there only is just one, single surface, flat. Meaning, depth, dimensionality, push and pull, come alive in the looking, the phenomenology of your perception. Horizon lines shifting in accordance to the focus view. If you let it draw you into it, then there is a place for you in it.

She renders as they do, but according to what draws her to them to their scene. She renders them into her own interest mystery and exploration. Her own study, fancy. Under her own management, demands, which are distinctly different from theirs, one imagines.

She has her own tech. Confounding the mechanical abstractions of her practice. Her spirit, movement of desire, expressed in and through and by way of her discipline, expression. She’s including it, the view of it, her process, with the figure of her subject. A transparency of it and beyond it.

Do you see her? Do you see her artistry is there, breathing, moving, posing, and expressing?

Where is the center? The horizon’s line? The horizon is where you put it. With your interest, your desire. It is shifting. We are shifting with it. Vectographic. We are the special spectacles that render it. She is.

Soft eyes see it sooner.

Michael Boyce 2022

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AUTHOR’S SHORT BIO Michael Boyce is a writer of fiction, poetry, and philosophy. He has published two books with Pedlar Press (both nominated for ReLit awards), and a number of short stories, poems, essays and artist profiles. He also is an editor, musician and photographer. He is currently working on a book of poetry and a new novel, and contributes to a blog of experimental writing and photography at mjbwriting.com

Endnote 1 https://www.instagram.com/brigitta_kocsis/

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ARTIST STATEMENT My work investigates the shifting concepts of the human body and its environment. I am interested in challenging the space between abstraction and representation by unfolding the implications of the structural and theoretical formations within the painting process. The hybridity of both form and subject juxtaposes humanities worth to that of the unfamiliar, becoming part metaphor, part reality, where the image is not only restricted to what we see but how we experience memory, time, and space in our contemporary digital living. #techboyz focuses on the everyday life of young tech workers in the Mile-End neighborhood in Montreal.

The paintings were inspired by these ordinary young men’s lives at a critical time in their life, searching for answers during this pandemic. My ongoing concerns with abstraction and figuration enable a unique dialogue against a background of various styles. The patterns and colors allow particular characteristics to sneak into the process to blur the distinction between the virtual and the actual.

Brigitta Kocsis 2022

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#techboyz ARTWORK IN THE EXHIBITION

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#techboyz 1, 2021, oil on canvas, 72 x 54 inches

#techboyz 2, 2021, oil on canvas, 54 x 72 inches

#techboyz 3, 2021, oil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches

#techboyz 4, 2021, oil on canvas, 54 x 72 inches

#techboyz 5, 2022, oil on canvas, 54 x 72 inches

#techboyz 6, 2022, oil on canvas, 54 x 72 inches

#techboyz 7, 2022, oil on canvas, 54 x 72 inches

#techboyz 8, 2022, oil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches

BRIGITTA KOCSIS

CURRICULUM VITAE

EDUCATION 2005 BFA, Visual Arts, Emily Carr University of Art & Design, Vancouver, BC 1997 Multimedia Program, The Western Front, Vancouver, BC 1993-94 Visual Arts Program, Studio Arts, Concordia University, Montreal, QC

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019 2017 2016 2015

2014 2012 2011

2009 2007 2006 1997 1995 1994

Contingent Bodies, Outremont Art Gallery, curated by Laurent Bouchard, Mtl., QC. Contingent Bodies, Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary, AB Contingent Bodies, Grunt Gallery, curated by Glenn Alteen, Vancouver, BC Universal Gravitation, Burnaby Art Gallery’s off-site exhibition, curated by Jennifer Cane, Burnaby, BC Magnetic Fields, Okotoks Art Gallery, Calgary, AB Magnetic Fields, Yrjö Liipolan Museum, Koski, Finland Magnetic Fields, Balassi Institute, curated by Yukka Haverinen, Helsinki, Finland Magnetic Fields, Szeged University of Hungary, Szeged, Hungary Magnetic Fields, Harcourt House, Edmonton, AB Secret Mechanisms, Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC Hide()us, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver, BC Secret Mechanisms, Vernon Public Art Gallery, curated by Lubos Culen, BC 2011 Hide()us, Mac11 Geneva Art Biennale, AaD Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland.

Hide()us, Nuit des Bains, AaD Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland Secret Mechanisms, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver, BC Secret Mechanisms, Campbell River Public Art Gallery, Campbell River, BC On an Intimate Dimension, VECC, Vancouver, BC In the Altogether, Maple Ridge Public Art Gallery, Maple Ridge, BC The Eye of the Beholder, Gallery Sansair, Vancouver, BC Cooped, Gallery Sansair, Vancouver, BC Tea Party, Fine Arts Building, Concordia University, Montreal, QC

TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2007 1995

Resonance, with M. Lowry, Amelia Douglas Gallery, New Westminster, BC Proforma, with Folke Kobberling, Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver, BC

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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2021 2018 2017 2016 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2008 2007 2006 2004 2003 1999 1996 1995

La maison de la culture Marie-Uguay, Montreal, QC Brooklyn Contemporary Art Fair, Presented by Saatchi Art, Brooklyn, NY, USA The Salt Spring National Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, Salt Spring Island, BC Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC Art Exhibit at Science World, ECUAD in collaboration with TRIUMF, curated by Ingrid Koenig Canada’s National Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics, Vancouver, BC AMS Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Interurban Gallery, Vancouver, BC Smash Gallery, Vancouver, BC Drawing Festival’12, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver, BC Drawing Festival’11, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver, BC Celebrate the Art of Canada, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver, BC Chapel Arts, Vancouver, BC Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver, BC British Columbia Psychological Association Awards, SFU, Vancouver, BC Threshold, Concourse Gallery, Vancouver, BC The Figurative Show, Concourse Gallery, ECI, Vancouver, BC Grunt Gallery, Vancouver, BC Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver, BC Or Gallery, Vancouver, BC

AWARDS/RESIDENCIES 2021 2020 2017 2017 2015 2014 2011 2011 1998 1995

Creation Grant - Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship - Vermont Studio Center The Salt Spring National Art Prize Finalist Project Assistance Grant - BC Arts Council Travel Grant - The Canada Council for the Arts Travel Grant - BC Arts Council Travel Grant - The Canada Council for the Arts Research & Creation Grant - The Canada Council for the Arts Residency - Vancouver Film School, Vancouver, BC Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design Student Awards

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS/WORKSHOPS 2020 2019

Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont Outremont Art Gallery, Montreal, QC

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2017 2014 2014 2012 2012 2011 2006

Grunt Gallery, Vancouver, BC Langara College, Vancouver, BC Harcourt House, Edmonton, AB Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC Simon Fraser University - Critical Inquiries Post-Conference, Vancouver, BC Fine Arts Academy, Geneva, Switzerland Maple Ridge Public Art Gallery, Maple Ridge, BC

VIDEOS/SCREENINGS/FESTIVALS 1998 1998 1998

1998 1997 1997 1995 1995

Frenesia Tipica (video), Vancouver Community Art Council collaboration with David Monacchi & Giorgio Magnanensi), Vancouver, BC Minz & Maunz (video), collaboration with Giorgio Magnanensi.

Imposed Hallucination (video), collaboration with Philip Giborski, SYNC II Film Video Festival, Toronto, ON Vancouver Community Art Council, BC Vancouver Film School, BC An Indian Act Shooting the Indian Act, Grunt Gallery & British Locus+, Wells, UK CRT Doodles (video), sound by Phil Giborski, OR Gallery, Vancouver, BC Stylus (Zev Asher, Alex MacKenzie, Phil Giborski), Vancouver Film School, BC Proforma, Video broadcast, Production Parade, Rogers Cable and at the ECIAD Media Show’95, Vancouver, BC Roughage (live video), 10th Improvised Music Festival, Seattle, Washington, USA

PUBLICATIONS Willow Little. Contingent Bodies: Metamorphosis in the Moment. Westmount Magazine, Andrew Burlone, Dec. 2018, www.westmountmag.ca/category/art-culture/art-galleries/.

Journal de Outremont. YouTube, YouTube, 22 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOXCGmujDto. Robert-Bourassa, Bibliotheque. YouTube, YouTube, 11 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=twp72W3G6T8.

Gomez, Laura. Interview with Brigitta Kocsis. Rev. of artist Brigitta Kocsis, Klassik Magazine International Mag. n.d. Web. 6 Sept. 2018.

Brigitta Kocsis: Contingent Bodies, catalogue, Spring 2017, essays by: Clint Burnham, 6 x 9 in, 32 pages, Grunt Gallery, ISBN: 978-1988708-01-0. 2017

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SSNAP Finalist, exhibition catalogue, Fall 2017, 22 cm x 28 cm, 112 pages, full color. Salt Spring Art Council.

Wadsley, Helena. Magnetic Fields by B. Kocsis. Rev. of Magnetic Fields, artist Brigitta Kocsis, Prairie Scene, 1 Sept. 2014, 33-34. Print.

Yang, Molly. Showcasing today’s artist of the day: Brigitta Kocsis. Rev. of artist Brigitta Kocsis, Atom Review Mag., n.d. Web. 8 Sept. 2014.

Priegert, Portia. Featured Artists: Brigitta Kocsis. Rev. of artist Brigitta Kocsis, Galleries West Anniversary Issue 3, 2011, 22. Print.

Johnson, Mia. Kocsis: Secret Mechanisms. Preview Art Magazine Feb. 2011:20. Print.

Buchard, Eva. Brigitta Kocsis: Secret Mechanisms . Escene: Emily Carr University’s Alumni Magazine, Dec 4, 2011, 4. Print.

The Boundary between Body and Environment. Mirror Jul. 2009: 6. Print.

Greer, Darryl. After a Rough Start†. Globe and Mail 2009, 20. Print.

Buchard, Eva. Brigitta Kocsis: Secret Mechanisms . Escene: ECUD’s Alumni Magazine 2008, 2. Print.

Proforma 1995 archive of the Emily Carr Institute Library, Vancouver, Canada. Video.

Proforma 1995 GHK (Art Academy of Kassel), Kassel, Germany. Video.

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VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY VERNON, BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

BRIGITTA KOCSIS · #TECHBOYZ