“Facing Enemies, Melting Opposites” the experience of fiction, understood as a representation operated by imagination and fantasy, seems to have much in common with the philosophical current to which it gives its name, namely that of fictionalism. In it, this concept assumes the practical-utilitarian value of wanting to believe that before certain abstract ideas or principles there is a correspondence with reality. This is why it is argued that fiction is not something totally different from reality but rather an echo, one of the forms through which the real shows itself. The term “fiction”, from lat. fictio-onis, in common language is used as a synonym of falsehood, lie, deceit, subterfuge, but in positive terms of a more creative mold it also refers to the activity of building, forming, structuring, processing and, moreover, thinking, imagining, supposing, inventing, inventing.

The artistic practice of Zsófia Keresztes exists somewhere in-between the representation of what actually happened and that which is possible. In this way it creates a reality effect through the use of four different interpretations of the concept of beauty and art in general: that of the sensualists, according to whom beauty coincides with the pleasant; that of the rationalists, who see it as coinciding with the truth; that of the formalists, who hold that it consists of formal relationships; and finally those who consider the beautiful as the sensible appearance of the idea. Moreover, the work of Keresztes, poised between virtual reality and paradigms of the concrete world, is generally based on mythological legends, metropolitan vicissitudes and the dynamics of consumerism and is characterised by an unmistakable imprinting of the dual matrix. In fact, this input has its roots in the current technological era without ever forgetting the organic aspect that sustains it and that is in a state of constant change as well as the incessant updates of operating systems and mobile applications.  

In “Facing Enemies, Melting Opposites” the objects are arranged like a platoon of armed warriors inside the exhibition space. Their bodies can be interpreted as simulatenously enemies and allies, they self-demolish and consume themselves to then reinvent themselves with a cyclic rhythm that could metaphorically repeat itself to infinity. These adrogenous bodies are delineated by lines of fusion and crossed rotation of the virtual and of the real. All these elements together operate like acts of a ritual that help the spectators to transfigure into another mental state and then be recreated in the digital space. “Facing Enemies, Melting Opposites” appears as a proscenium of human, animal or supernatural masks, whose purpose can be magical-ritual, warlike, entertainment, or simply aimed at camouflage. Nobody actually knows. Meanwhile, the barbarians as incarnations of passwords await at the door.

Curated by Domenico de Chirico



Courtesy of the artist, Gianni Manhattan Vienna and Karlin Studios
Photocredit Tomas Soucek and Dávid Biró