A photography exhibition by Michał Grochowiak, and Máté Bartha in Platán Gallery, Budapest, 2016
In 2016 artists Michal Grochowiak and Máté Bartha worked together to create a body of images, and an installation titled „Swing”, to illustrate the works of a fictive ’pataphysic’ philosopher and poet, Adrian Pasfaux. Pataphysics is a concept invented by Alfred Jarry, a literary method to describe „phenomena beyond metaphysics”.
„Swaying on a swing, both being at the top and at the bottom the object observed by us does not change. What temporarly changes is perspective.”
- Adrian Pasfaux
- Adrian Pasfaux
The images in the series document the attempt of finding the ruling system behind visual phenomena by applying a set of creative filters over chaos, in a similar manner to how the tradition of literary philosophy does. The context of this search is the „capitalist realism” of today, defining the complete abscence of a transcendental rule or a general historical direction, where things only carry a relative material value. Standing on the ground of this post-secular, disillusioned reality we still want to think that unfolding from subjective constellations there’s still something left from the long lost vertical existence, the realm of Heaven and Earth. The artists were looking for signs in the way religious reformers did under the pressure of predestination, believing that it’s best to keep an eye open, as these images may carry the difference between salvation or damnation. Still, this enterprise of „guerilla-metaphysics” remains futile as ever, as nothing can guarantee that things stand for more then themselves.
The images presented on this site (apart from the installation views) are Máté Bartha's. You can find Michal Grochowiak's works on his site:
"I like that they (Michal Grochowiak and Máté Bartha) both have a consideration about unimportance, that is called in their works at face value. Máté’s previous ‘nonrelevant’ project and Michal’s ‘It Does Not Count’-series ring the same bell, both may be unconsciously rooted in the bachelor-machine concept of the early surrealists. Simply put, they (the Surrealists) just wanted to produce something outside the circle of social usefullness. Speculations on the world through images of the weirdest kind, however, came to acquire a more prominent role in understanding the world outside, since then. There is also a name given to this tactics – ‘guerrilla metaphysics’ (Graham Harman) – that elevates art making to the level of a certain form of philosophy. At least as an irregular, impressionistic or even opportunistic branch – as the ‘guerrilla' prefix suggests. Pictures that make the world look full of wonder, unfamiliar or even magical can be identical to philosophical questioning, as they creatively point towards something beyond experience"
- Szilvi Német, Art Historian
- Szilvi Német, Art Historian
About the exhibition in online press:
