Attila Csörgő
Archimedean Point
30 October 2009 – 24 January 2010
PALACE OF ARTS
H-1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell u. 1.
Phone (36 1) 555 3444
Fax: (36 1) 555 3458
info [at] ludwigmuseum.hu
Attila Csörgő is among one of the best-known Hungarian artists who has featured at prominent international exhibitions. In 1999 he represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale, in 2001 he was awarded the Munkácsy Prize, in 2003 he participated at the Istanbul Biennial and the Biennale of Sydney in 2008. The same year his work Moebius Space earned the Nam June Paik Award, one of the most important European recognitions in media art.
In his works Attila Csörgő explores the relationship between a plane and space. He often immerses himself for months in intricate problems of mathematics, physics or projective geometry, creating works that demonstrate possible solutions to these problems. At other times, he constructs special cameras to capture reality on pictures never seen before. He is engaged in optical illusions generated by the interaction of light and movement, in those surprising and unexpected physical phenomena that shatter the viewer’s belief in apparently evident physical laws. Through different simulacra of objects or forms, the virtual products of his unusual devices, allows a glance into an underlying reality that normally goes unnoticed, due to the routine ways of our superficial everyday perception. Precise calculation and the certainty of engineering are combined in mechanical constructions pieced together from simple materials and in his mobile structures the thrill of discovery and a sense of uncertainty arise from the limitations of human perception. His poetical works with often playful and facile solutions reveal a humorous as well as a philosophical mindset. The partial technical solutions and the finish of his artworks are consciously and deliberately incidental. He does not attempt to aestheticize his mechanical constructions. By reducing the process of execution to a functional minimum, he manages to direct the viewers’ attention to the essential elements of the geometrical concept or the physical phenomenon represented by the operating mechanism. The three-dimensional animation based on unbelievably intricate and complex calculations, which is generated in front of our eyes from within an apparent yet all the more purposeful chaos of sticks, strings, pulleys, and weights, would doubtlessly be easier to model on a computer. Something, however, would then inevitably vanish from it: the purified immediacy of thought and invention.
Arranging the works around three core themes: Distorted Spaces, Peeled Spaces, Time-Images and Time-Sculptures, the exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of Attila Csörgő’s unbroken and consistent career, starting from the early 1990s. The exhibition is the first station of an international exhibition series, with its next venues being at our collaborating partner institutions, the Mudam, Luxembourg in 2010 and the Hamburger Kunsthalle – Galerie der Gegenwart in 2011.
