Museum PR Announcements News and Information

Secession Opens Attila Csorgo Exhibition

Secession presents Attila Csorgo an exhibition on view December 2, 2011 – February 5, 2012.

Combining the media of photography, sculpture, and drawing, the works of Hungarian-born artist Attila Csörgõ offer viewers an ironic and humorous introduction to questions of science and technology. The results are often unexpected, amusing, or even poetical. In long-term experiments the artist explores branches of science such as kinetics, optics, or geometry to examine questions of perception; and on this basis he develops his theories about the construction of reality.

Attila Csörgõ, Exhibition view, Photo: Martin Ulrich Kehrer

“The fundamental difference between my work and that of an engineer is that the systems I build are transparent”, says Attila Csörgõ about his artistic work: “And my research, i.e. the processes yielding these results, is open to view. Unlike a computer or other technical devices where we do not know what goes on inside them. I don’t build black boxes but try to open up closed systems, at least to a certain degree, even if the mathematical calculations and conceptual considerations behind them are not always visible. My works very obviously combine art and engineering, although what I do is unquestionably art.”

For the exhibition at the Vienna Secession, Attila Csörgõ created an experimental “Clock-work” which continues his examination of light and motion combined. At the interface of visual arts and science, his work on phenomena of perception finds its focus in the lemniscate, the figure eight lying on its side. Both mathematical symbol and poetical shape, the lemniscate is a symbol of infinity shaped like a horizontal 8. What Csörgõ has built is a “time machine” which can be read as a sculpture or a threedimensional drawing, a moving picture or simply a scientific experiment. “If we consider the things that humankind has created”, so the artist in an interview: “these are mostly very transient phenomena. The forms of mathematics, in contrast, are fairly stable, if not indeed the most stable of all. Their historical distillation endows these mathematical ideas with a noble character. This may be one reason why I like using “poor” materials to realize my works: it creates a strong contrast between transient thought and concrete material.”

Attila Csörgõ was born in Budapest in1965, where he lives and works nowadays. He studied Painting at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (1988-94) in Budapest and Intermedia at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten (1993) in Amsterdam.
Solo exhibitions (selection): 2011 Hamburger Kunsthalle—Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburg; 2010 Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest; Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan; Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin; 2009 Würfelbahnen und Raumkurven, Museum Folkwang im RWE Turm, Essen.
Group exhibitions (selection): 2011 „Wir sind alle Astronauten“, MARTa Herford, Herford; Entre le cristal et la fumée, Galerie Poggi & Bertoux Associés, Paris; 2010 Les Promesses du Passé, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fine Line, Georg Kargl Fine Art & Georg Kargl Box, Vienna; What Happens If?, Storey Gallery, Lancaster; 2009 Musée d´Art Moderne Grand Duc Jean (MUDAM), Luxembourg; Materialien, Münzsalon, Berlin; Galleria Enrico Astuni, Bologna.

Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
www.secession.at

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *