You dreamt with straight lines, I did with curves, which had acid shadows
Trafó Galéria / BUDAPEST (Hungary)
31.10.2015 – 29.11.2015

The group exhibition of Trafó Galéria focuses on the digital aesthetical revolution dominating contemporary art, which also became a global phenomenon without actual national borders among the youngest generation of visual artists. The exhibitors apply new radical strategies of image creation, and they tend to approach already existing genres with new sensibility: digital prints (George Crîngaşu), paper objects and installations (Zsófia Keresztes) or videos (Jaakko Pallasvuo).
All the artworks of the exhibition are in dialogue with the visuality of trash, which actually creates a base for the personal lyricism of their creators. In this case it might not be an overstatement to highlight that the works of the exhibition use a new visual language, which is in a very complex relationship with the institutionalized irony. The artists on one hand distance themselves from it, but on the other hand they tend to hide behind the mask of irony.
Every exhibited piece at least questions the classical elevated status of an artwork and almost every position systematically disseminates and undermines the notion of the aura, which was attached to it for more than a century. Thus the exhibition also tends to highlight that contemporary visual art nowadays is based on rather co-ordinate and horizontal deep structures than on hierarchical systems. This phenomenon leaves its traces on Crîngaşu’s works in the form of infinite reproduction and variability. Pallasvuo is capable of making his viewer believe that his choice of neglected forms is completely random. This is why his oscillatory shifts between lyrical and satirical language lead to a certain contradictory, where the two poles are extinguishing each other dialectically. Pallasvuo also gives total and free access to his works online. Zsófia Keresztes’s works can raise our attention to the fact that our society is ex¬tremely fetishizing even industrial garbage in forms of boxes and packages of posh objects.
The works are exhibited in the space based on formal synergies and constellations, so in the gallery basically some formal ephemeral meetings happen among them. Of course, in most cases they use the same referential background, they tend to transcend brands and products into symbols in a very collegial and parallel way, and they all are working in front of a universal and abstract scenery and set where they transpose reality in a virtual or real dreamscape.
In the works featured in the show, the boundaries are not that important, instead we are confronted with the realm of fluorescent colors, featherweight structures, fashion, eccentrics and psychedelia which create a transgressive maze in the space of the gallery. The artists exhibit pieces which are enormously mobile and variable. Pallasvuo’s lyrical video dystopias strongly reflect on the amateur and widespread use of vlog, YouTube and other easily accessible web2 phenomena. His epic video entitled EU from 2014 also masks itself as a performative, theatrical work, while it is a decadent allegory, a carnival-like dance macabre of our society. The pair of the videos entitled How to Intenet and Picasso create a tight span in his video oeuvre as they can be interpreted as a satirical beginning of an artist’s career and a lyrical end of an established one.
The artworks of Zsófia Keresztes are based on horizontal and co-ordinate supplementation. Her works often depart from postmodernist reinterpretation of the classical method of conceptual art based on found objects, as she uses aesthetical byproducts of commercial packaging upon which she builds her fragile dream-like visual universe. The User Experience series of Zsófia Keresztes is based on the everyday use of digitalia, which grows into a universal experience, especially in her palm leaves glowing in front of red volcanic ambient, and on her granite grey and black mountain comb, and also on her textiles that recall a deep dive into the azure of the ocean. Her very fragile, ephemeral and amorphous blue figures also start to play a huge role in her very interestingly abstracted series of new works.
The flora of the huge tapestry of George Crîngaşu creates a close relationship with the motives of Zsófia Keresztes. The image field of Crîngaşu consisting of optical and prism-like illusions undermines the cracked symbolism. His Pallas statue which is lost somewhere in the jungle of virtuality still dominates the view, but in her shadow new fetish symbols rise; fast cars, golden watches. The overpacked virtual warehouse of motifs creates a superflux, which is highlighting the variability of an overloaded allegory, which always shows an ironic different face. Especially, because the gif format of the 3D rendered image relativizes the main view which might seem to be cast in stone. But on the contrary, the real works of Crîngaşu are files which own a digital conscience, and which can open the gates of unlimited objectivity and obejcthood.

Curated by Áron Fenyvesi
Courtesy Trafó Galéria