Entropy & Cosmos – English

             “At first there was Chaos…and the black Night, and from the Night in turn arose the ether and the Day…”       

Hesiod, Theogony

Balance, proportionality, and harmony were concepts once employed to refer to the beauty of a composition (pictorial, poetic, musical…). These concepts were related to the idea that nature, in its boundlessness, was ruled by a necessary order. Below this universal order of things the human being was occupied, by means of science, with searching for the causes and explaining the consequences.

Nowadays this perception has changed. Today´s understanding is that the laws of nature underlie dynamic systems where a small change in the cause of a phenomenon is not proportional to its results, unpredictable and indeterminable. Balance, harmony – Order – are not necessarily opposed to the indeterminate, to chance – Chaos. There is a harmonious coexistence of chaos and order.

Contemporary awareness, the way people understand their surroundings and their sense of beauty exhibit a tight relationship to this coexistence of chaos and order, and in the contemporary artistic languages configurations and processes may be observed where, such as with the movement of the clouds or the rhythm of the sea waves within nature, combinations of chaos and order are present immanently.

This analysis is not about aesthetics, nor will it attempt to interpret the works of the exhibition from a perspective of art history (opposing, for example, the discursive plurality of postmodernity to the univocal discourses of modernity). The task is to be able to explain these works – with their various languages and processes – on the basis of their compositions and to understand how within these compositions different manifestations of an established order (seriality, repetition, rhythm) coexist, and how this order is destabilized in some part like a cyclical fluctuation or as a result of a totally unexpected change (accidentalness, spontaneity of execution).

The concepts “chaos” and “order” or, as the title of the exhibition says, “entropy” and “cosmos”, form the basis of the dialectical game presented here. One finds constructive compositions that follow the tradition of concrete-geometric art as well as compositions of a subjective character that are close to certain forms of lyrical expression. In all of these the validity of these two essential concepts – “chaos” and “order” – is revealed as they coexist as part of a dominant and creative force.

Though the works of Mária Balažová (Trnava, 1956), Viktor Hulík (Bratislava, 1949) and Vera Molnár (Budapest, 1924) represent different generations, they are all in the tradition of geometric as conceived in a concrete historical-geographical context. These three artists continue the impulse of the constructive languages of the European avantgardes that rejected the representative art which dominated the official artistic stage for many years.

Vera Molnár moved to Paris in her youth and formed part of the artists´ collective GRAV – Groupe de Recherche d´Art Visuel – that came into being in the French capital in the sixties and dedicated itself to optical and kinetic experimenting. Molnár – who is considered today to be one of the pioneers of “digital art” – then began to investigate the possibilities offered by digital media. In many of her compositions certain “structures of repetition” occur (pictorial shapes, graphic elements or typographies that succeed one another by means of rotation, displacement or fracturing) into which new elements irrupt as if by chance or accidentally – a certain form of chaos – that alter the rhythm the viewer´s perception seemed to be used to. And it is this trait of indetermination in the predictability of the combinatorics, this voluntary alteration of a preestablished rhythm, that conveys a subjective-lyrical character that is peculiar to Molnar´s work.

Mária Balažová and Viktor Hulík are part of the new generation of artists grouped around the movement Klubu konkretistov (1967-1971) that involved Czech and Slovak artists and followed the tradition of the historical constructive styles. Balažová´s work – where the binomial chaos and order is a constant feature – goes beyond the formal tradition of the constructive styles so as to incorporate a conceptual dimension. On her canvases – sometimes of the proportion of large mural paintings – the artist creates compositions based on geometric elements one associates with postindustrial archetypes such as traffic signs, commercial logotypes or fantastic typographies and so explores the mechanisms and mental processes that are involved in the articulation of the signs and that are related to the complexity of human language.

The work of Viktor Hulík begins with painting and evolves into the territory of three-dimensionality and intervention into the open space. His works are characterized by a radical reduction of color (black/white, on occasions gray) and the systematic repetition of minimal geometric units that are reminiscent of the binary pattern of information technology, though these compositions have more affinity with musical than with mathematical problems. These units transform themselves according to the almost infinite possibilities of the combinatorics, but are object to unexpected irruptions and singular changes of rhythm, such as those of a dodecaphonic composition.

The construction of regular and ordered rhythms into which elements irrupt as forms of chaos, terms used here to describe the work of Vera Molnár, could also be applied to the pictorial work of Adriana Czernin (Sofia, 1969, lives in Vienna), linked to the subject of ornaments. The reference is to the work a part of which is presented in this exhibition and dates from 2014, which is when the artist was invited by the MAK (Museum für Angewandte Kunst – Museum of Applied Arts) of Vienna to re-compose (although one could also say re-interpret) various fragments that entered into the ornamental mosaic of the interior of the old mosque Ibn-Tulun in Cairo, which is kept in the museum´s collection. The artist then presented a series of paintings, drawings and interventions into the walls of the museum that reproduced fragments of the original ornamentation which were re-interpreted by modifying their directrices, their order and the mutual proportions to become another form of ornamentation which, in this case, is irregular and unpredictable although – such as in a traditional mosaic – extendable to infinity and generating different rhythms of its own.

The coexistence of chaos and order is a constant feature in the work of Levente Bálványos viewed in its totality. While the configuration of his sculptural objects is determined by the normative principles of classical geometry (horizontal and vertical superposition of levels, well-measured relationship between volume and void, balanced contrast between the exterior and the interior, etc.) his reliefs of graphite sticks incrusted on the supporting surface represent the opposition to all forms of order and harmony, resembling a game of Mikado where chance and indetermination decide the composition of the pieces.

The electric circuits, ants, tubes and other elements presented by Peter Kogler (Innsbruck, 1959) in his paintings and projections are inevitably associated to the labyrinth, a universal symbol of the ambivalence between chaos and order. The labyrinth (such as the splendid overall presented by the artist at the Documenta X) is a figure present in literature and plastic representations, as a metaphor of the human being´s confusion when confronted with the immensity of an infinite space in the midst of a multitude of paths and ways. In the chaos of possible paths one has the possibility of – mentally – constructing a determined itinerary, with a beginning and an end, leading to the exit, the solution, the return to order.

The work of Claus Prokop (Klagenfurt, 1966) reflects the ambivalence-opposition of the binomial chaos-order in his paintings of different formats at the basis of which one finds the systematic repetition of a characteristic element that apparently forms series. The systematic repetition of this element contrasts with the tectonic structure of each painting, which is always different and unique. A parallel work by the artist that engages in a dialogue with the concept of the exhibition is the collection of objects, fragments and garbage materials that he brings together and disposes on trays; a similar work is a type of cases that remind one of the boîtes-en-valise in Duchamp´s way. There is a contrast between the diverse, mostly non-artistic origin of these small items and the extreme orderliness and care with which they have been assorted according to color, profile or formal associations. A means of establishing order in the disparity and fortuitousness of these items is to in this way convert them into a section of archaeological strata of the postindustrial age.

This type of artists´ assemblage by Claus Prokop can be associated with the collections of puzzle pieces by Hajnalka Tarr (Budapest, 1977) that this artist presents in the exhibition. Her work in general is extremely varied (from drawings, installations and photography to performances) and frequently resorts to the portrait of her own body, to objects of the domestic environment or very simple materials she uses to create works of great sensitivity and formal beauty. A very common process in many of her works is that of squaring, shredding or “pixeling” the images, altering the viewer´s habits of perception. This is what happens – in a singular manner – with the series of puzzles presented in the exhibition, puzzles showing iconic works of art everybody has stored in his or her memory – such as well-known paintings by Goya, Manet, Van Gogh etc. – the pieces of which the artist disposes differently to what is usual, in this way creating beautiful abstract compositions and re-creating a new order that leads both to an aesthetical and conceptual experience that puts into question the idea of representation and the production of meaning.

The shape of the grid is the basic structure that – layer upon layer – underlies the canvases presented by György Varga (Budapest, 1966). In these paintings a shape of irregular order is repeated that is realized with delicate strokes and stripes intersecting horizontally and vertically in an over-all equilibrium. There are graphite lines (traced with chalk line) and a very timid use of color: acrylic applied with a syringe, dissolved in water and achieving the transparency of water-color on paper. Within this structure – essential, nude and direct – one sees fragments where the relationship figure-background disappears and the white of the background irradiates an interior luminosity that makes the viewer forget this form of rational and structured order and enter into an illusion of space.

Pia Jardí

(Translated from Catalan by Heinrich Blechner)