Cultural Center of the Town of Bratislava and FOTOFO
Society
have a pleasure to invite You to the exhibition
Iosif
Király - "INDIRECT"
The sub-real photographic diary (1990 -
2000) of a Romanian author
FOTOFO
Galéria Profil,
Prepotská 4,
Bratislava
The exhibition will be opened on November 1st, 2000 at 3 p.m.
in Gallery of Photography Profil, Prepotská 4, 814 99 Bratislava
The exhibition will last until December 3 rd, 2000
Opening hours: 1 p.m. - 6 p.m. except Mondays
Iosif Király - Indirect
Iosif Király's photographic diary Indirect (1990-2000) is his spontaneous personal back
scene activity, developing continuously in the shadow of his more elaborated work with
subREAL.
It is a lifetime project: "I'm taking photos of my own existential traces; I'm
recording the growing 'disorder' around me: the spaces where I live, the surrounding
objects."
Images play a determinative role both in the process of memory and history as well as in
configuring identity (recording a dynamic archaeology of the Ego).
Whilst encouraging the "viewer" to relate to the image directly, the "photo
Diary" "indirectly" retraces the mystery of identity, the bond between
question and answer, in a confrontation with the immediate real.
The poetic "stream of memory", the alteration of symbols, is suggested by
blurry, pictorial interventions; fuzzy, partially coagulated and dilated imagery
underlines the flux of subjectivity. But the clarity of the outlines (their document-like
quality) makes a precisely defined moment. Király maintains the balance between the
impalpable, the metaphorical and heightened reality.
Images act as sensors which reveal the artist's difficult status in the current Romanian
period of crisis and post-Communist transition. Hedged around with dilemmas, paranoia and
instability, this is perceived either as alienating, negative and gradually devastating,
or as an enticing, Ego-transforming abnormality.
One major theme in Király's work is the city, the metropolis and its suburbs. A desolate
Bucharest, drowning in everyday turpitude: anodyne streets, trash, "ordinary
people" the decline of the social as a meta-artistic phenomenon, religious kitsch,
destitute advertising with "Turkish" features, the counterfeits of a
never-ending transition subversively eroding the individual psyche, humanoid dogs -
underground sensors of an indigent reality; and also gypsies singing in the subways at
night, the écorchés of electoral posters, tragicomic disintegrations (of everlasting
local political struggles) within a derisive context, sheep (potential clones) and
derricks in the suburbs - all come within the frame, emphasising a total lack of ethical
and aesthetic perspective.
In spite of aggressively "shooting" all the time, Király has the meditative
nature and the sageness of introversion. The assimilation of re-framed sensations leads to
a re-understanding of the real or, sometimes, to its regeneration. The
transformation of reality into appropriated/archived sensations, subsequently reviewed,
allows both introversion and inhibition to "act" on the direct experience of
reality. In this way an "ulterior" relationship is established which almost
tangibly represents the dimension of the interval between the shooting and developing of
the image.
Using different degrees of "distillation", Indirect creatively
"denatures" the real in visual messages, which range from the accessible to the
highly sophisticated. Király maintains a balance between the sensational and the
monotonous, between sarcasm and pathos, while subtly infiltrating the symbol under the
guise of the documentary - verging on being both "in" and "out" of the
aesthetic dimension.
Ruxandra Balaci
Edited from an article published in Artpress 241, Paris, December 1998 |
