“For, as art enters life, the question that will motivate people far more than What is art? is the much more metaphysically relevant and pressing What is life?”
(Nato Thompson, Living as form)
Fear of missing out or FoMO is “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent”. This social angst is characterized by “a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing”.
FOMO perpetuates the fear of having made the wrong decision on how to spend time, as “you can imagine how things could be different”.
(Wikipedia)

When I wanted to make a portrait of my mother, who I haven´t seen in more than five years – since she passed away – I first realized that making an image is nothing but an attempt to touch the surface of something or somebody invisible that exists no more. Touching leaves traces which are visible but untouchable. Therefore the image is a gate, a window between real and unreal. At once it is there and yet it is not there.
For some time now – more than five years – I try to paint as if I were a machine, an inkjet printer: I let images flow through me based on various systems and schemes. I also thought that in fact it doesn't even have to be me, making the images. Hence I gave large scale paint-by- number papers to the audience: if they are interested in the hidden image they can colour it.
And the audience likes to colour, because colouring is fun and we are all curious about what is hidden from our eyes.
When my friend Pepper Pepper had to go back to the USA I created life scale copies of his and my body too so that we could keep on dancing what we had started. But instead of dancing I had ideas of destruction and rave, disappearance and cessation. So instead of our bodies I used the copy of my own body. I am not authorized to execute these cruel actions with the copy of my friends body, I thought.” (János Brückner)

Curated by Péter Bencze

Courtesy of the artist and Institute of Contemporary Art