Gábor Koós looks back on two successful series of works, “Budapest Diary” with its incorporation of large scale woodcut prints and matrix, as well as “Souvenir”, where the artist builds life-sized, three-dimensional objects with the use of frottage technique. With this body of work he not only won “Graphic of the year” prize in Hungary but was also awarded with the prize of the Graphic Triennale of Miskolc as well as the Derkovits Gyula Fine Art Award. He could work and exhibit at leading residencies and renowned institutions in the region and beyond (Banská St A Nica Contemporary, Meetfactory Prague, PROGR Art Center Switzerland, Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Budapest Gallery).
His works are to be found in important public and private collections. This year’s acquisition by Ludwig Museum is the highlight and conclusion of this body of work – the upcoming solo show Koós now enters new territories.
“Unfolded territories” marks a shift away from the artists intention of preserving places and objects with biographical relevance – described as a personal “diary writing” by Zsolt Mészáros – towards a more general interest in appropriation and reproduction of space and its defining structure. Therefore the artist’s new work is not anymore a manifestation of subjective experiences, but the attempt of an objective investigation within the framework of an experimental setting. The artist’s interest in the relation of original and copy remains strong and even becomes the leitmotiv of his newest spatial analysis he creates in form of an immersive environment at Chimera-Project Gallery.
To describe the new installation Koós uses the mathematical term of diffeomorphism. A diffeomorphism is basically the process of taking one structure and morphing it into another structure through a consistent process. One could think of a clay sphere being squashed into a cube. Sphere and cube consist of the same elements, they remain identical copies but differentiate in their spatial extension. The new spatial representation allows us to see and understand the structure and its defining elements in a new way.
For the exhibition Koós experiments with a found, empty factory he morphs into the gallery space. The morphing is executed with the already known, semi-automated process of the frottage technique. No further tools are used, no refinements are made and therefore no undesired filters are adapted. This technique enables the artist to map the factory space bit by bit, he literally unfolds the space element by element and reinstalls the resulting material in the gallery space structure. Through Koós’s former body of work we are already aware of his ability to reproduce objects and create copies with a high degree of authenticity. Paraphrasing Walter Benjamin we can be curious about what will happen to the “aura” of an entire space when it is dislocated and reproduced within the white cube setting of Chimera-Project Gallery. By using a diffeomorphism Koós creates a reproduction, that is able to unveil and create new qualities that were not visible but were growing out of true elements in the structure of the original. Through the new process pure imitation becomes obsolete. In fact the installation shall provide us with a better understanding and new conclusions regarding the inventive and questionable relation of the original, the reproduction.
