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Kelemen Karoly
Introduction
Introduce yourself • Introduce the exhibition topic and structure • Tell about the phylosophy of the artist, his inspiration, sarcasm and appreciation of art.
Text from the walls: It was over three decades ago that the jury of the Musée du Château Festival in Cagnes-‐sur-‐Mer, France, chaired by art historian Pierre Restany, awarded the “1ere PALETTE D’OR” prize to a young Hungarian artist, Károly Kelemen. Already well-‐known in the Hungarian scene for his photographic works and “eraser paintings,” Kelemen distinguished himself in the international field not as a follower of one of the in-‐vogue trends, but as someone who reflected on the key tendencies of modern visual art in an autonomous and original manner. Károly Kelemen has been a vital figure of contemporary Hungarian art, whose works can be seen in prestigious public collections. Invariably, cultural memory, particularly the art historical canon, serves as the starting point for his works. Kelemen makes well-‐known chapters of art history his own subject, constantly hijacking the coursebook version of the stories as he critically appropriates and recreates the stylistic elements and compositional topoi of this or that artist. Offering delightful intellectual adventures for those who are ready to engage in reflection, his artificial world is always temporary, never finalized: Kelemen’s works are sensitive manifestations of a constantly changing past, an ungraspable present, and an unpredictable future. They are par excellence free works – and this has nothing to do with how the age in which they were created curtailed personal freedoms. This is an oeuvre art history is hard put to classify: though Kelemen’s work has undeniable affinities with the ambitions of appropriation art, the Hungarian artist does not simply remodel or evoke the emblematic works of modern art, as, say, the American masters of Pop Art do, but makes them completely his own. His best-‐known, now iconic, figure is a bear, which is often difficult to identify as a symbolic alter ego of the artist himself. In alchemy, the bear is a symbol of the first state of matter, both fearful and kind, an animal that man could always only domesticate virtually, in fantasies and imagination. According to tradition, during its long hibernation it has direct contact with the other world, and life shoots up again when it wakes up in the spring and brings the message of transcendence to this world. The virtual and the playful appear with such spontaneity in Kelemen’s works – often reinterpreting classic pieces – as the teddy bear in the unselfconscious world of childhood. In Károly Kelemen’s works, nothing is as we would expect things to be: bears iron, obelisks shrink, the dead look around cheerfully, and well-‐known stories take surprising turns. This is a free world – for free spirits.
Historical Icons Tell about the theme of the room: • Communist period in Hungary,
• Communist culture, • Forced Industrialization,
• Rebellion against the Communist
Mention the connection of the technique (graffit and eraser) with the topic of the room
Text from the wall: The still measurable pathos of „everyday heroes” who wish to do away with the past for good is one of the central topics of the art of Károly Kelemen. His works that perform ironic remakes of the patterns of forced industrialization raise the questions of memory and remembering with a sort of self-‐evident naturalness. These works urge us to re-‐evaluate the part of history that appears in our lives time after time as a bitter point of reference. Let us reconsider the apparently ineradicable images of schematism! There are seven rubber-‐images displayed in the hall (and let us note that the genre itself, the systematic erasing of graphite drawings on canvas is one of Kelemen’s significant stylistic innovations), and all seven evoke black and white archival photographs. However, it seems that the documentary attitude has literary faded, it has become uncertain. The referentiality of these images is no longer produced by a kind of collective will, but rather by personal memory.
Heroin and Heroina (photo, acryl, iron)
• What are the techniques the artist uses? • Who are those people? • What is the contradiction and metaphor here?
EMAIL WORKER TROOPER WITH EMPTY BINDER (graphit and eraser on canvas)
• The image, character of a 'worker' in the communist culture: a worker is a heroe
Reading worker (graphit and eraser on canvas)
• The image, character of a 'worker' in the communist culture: a worker is intellectual
1956 (graphit and eraser on canvas)
• The story of the statue of Stalin in Budapest
Industry and Happiness (oil on canvas)
• The connection between german culture/mythology and Hungary at the time
• Forced industrialization • Maybe USSR vs Nazi Germany????
335,1% (graphit and eraser on canvas)
• Forced industrialization • What is the meaning of the name of the artwork
(in USSR workers was called to overwork their norm, and was considered heroes if was overworking)
Workers Marlboro )graphit and eraser on canvas)
Herоe of the coal buttle (graphit and eraser on canvas)
• Forced industrialization • The communist ideal of a worker – the selfless
heroe
Personal Icons • What is personal about the works?
• What is the ‘red thread’ that goes through all the artworks – the inspirations of the artist?
Text from the wall: Károly Kelemen only creates unusual portraits. In many cases, he does not even represent the face, insisting on the eyes only. However, when the face does appear, he deliberately gets the well-‐known features “wrong,” diverts and dissects them, or stiffens them into masks – mostly through digital alteration. He does not simply redraw or re-‐colour the photos, but deliberately corrupts their quality in order to produce grainy surfaces that are able to bear the personal signature of the artist – understood as a counter-‐technicization vehicle – even in the age of mechanical reproduction. Kelemen magnifies the resulting digital images, prints them on canvas, and also paints on them. Thus, the portraits may evoke a person, and together with that a certain historical time and its familiar style, but eventually they rather foreground the subject who becomes an interpreter through the process of reworking – demonstrating the classic dictum of Cosimo de Medici that every painter paints himself. Kelemen’s Dissected Abstract Paintings (Preparált absztrakt festmények), which go through the various styles of abstract painting, represent the absurdity of artistic abstraction through the figurative gesture of applying glass eyes. In his work there is no surface that could not have a face. It is this ethical insight that is given an authentic artistic form with the dissected paintings.
Mondrian with red jacket
Paul with diamond
Wittenstein in blue-‐green wig
Gardener
Cloud
Earth
Cherry knight
Pussycat devil
Sun and Moon
Headache
Balance
Smoker
Gold-‐Chinese
Kandinsky in Blue
(pigment print, acryl of canvas)
• The technique -‐ why all of those are retouched this way – deconstruction.
• What is common between the characters of the artwork
Petofi Virtue (oil on canvas)
• Who was Petofi?
Preparated abstract paintings (acryl, glass eyes on hardboard)
• Why are there eyes? Are they looking at you or they are an exression of the artowork?
• Legacy of Duchamp: everything and everyone can be art
The Joy of life -‐ sunshine, sea, beach (oil on canvas)
• The story of the Kinder washing machine • Personification of every object, not usually
interesting for artist • Everything can be art
Woodoo Geometry (digital print, acryl on canvas)
• How is the techniques of the artwork related to the theme?
• What are african masks for africans?
Miss Chaoshunter (digital print, acryl on canvas)
• How is the techniques of the artwork related to the theme?
• What are african masks for africans?
Mr Biker (digital print, acryl on canvas)
• How is the techniques of the artwork related to the theme?
• What are african masks for africans?
Bubble and Blue Szondi test (digital print, acryl on canvas)
• What is Szondi test? • How is it applied nowadays?
Dissected Icons • What does it mean – dessected icons?
• Are those peaces all together or separate? • What do they represent?
Text from the wall: The portrait is the classical visual representation of the individual. It evokes a person, among other means, by preserving and re-‐creating one’s gaze. Kelemen places glass eyes on his abstract paintings that lack any characteristic trait of a personality and also on the literally lifeless basalt stones, thus giving them faces. This is the personifying gesture of a child, transformed into art: the act of dissection also stands for the reanimation and reinterpretation of a dead world. Through personification, new meanings are attributed to the instruments of the dead world: in this context, the teddy-‐bear-‐eyed basalt cobbles also become the touchstones of personality.
The dissected icons № 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 33, 37, 39, 42, 44, 45, 46, 53, 54, 56 (acryl, painted glass eyes on pavement stone, iron)
• The stories about the cat-‐stone • What do the stones symbolize?
Uncontrolable Icons • Who are the people included into the topic of the room?
• What is common between each of them? • Art for idea?
Text from the wall: When the human being is overcome by desire – be that sexual, or that of artistic fulfilment or the desire of socio-‐cultural redemption – rationality is necessarily overshadowed and gives way to transcendence. The works exhibited here represent this topos – consistently put in a new perspective. Kelemen does not idealize this sphere: he approaches it, like all his subject-‐matters, with irony. The icons of bodily desires, the naked female bodies seen through male eyes, appear simultaneously as the base objects of sexual desire and as symbols of idealized femininity, elevated to a divine sphere. Similarly to the icons of redemption by the spirit, history or art (Che Guevara, Heidegger, Beuys), who never appear as mere sublimated representatives of a certain philosophy, these icons are also permeated by their corporeality and desires, as well as by the ecstasy of opening up to transcendence. Behind these sacred icons one can always glimpse at profane meanings – from the regions of the uncontrollable.
Casanova
Surprise
Butterfly
Fuck
Twist and Shout
Mirror
Host
Mollusc
Double Headed
(silvergelatine on paper)
• Who is on the pictures • How was the photos created? • Inspiration of Kelemen – Beuys
Resurrecting Che Guevara (oil on canvas)
• The story of Che Guevara • The contradiction of the artwork
Heidegger ploughing (photo, acryl on canvas)
• Who was Heidegger? • The legend about (?)
Manzoni signing a nude (graphit and eraser)
• Who was Manzoni? • What philosophy did he have? • How is this philosophy reflected in the
artwork
Mother milk (oil on canvas)
• Which period of art history does the style resemble?
• What could a connection be?
Brown Sugar Pieta (oil on canvas)
• Resemblance: The early works of Tatlin • Communist idea about a perfect woman?
Primavera (oil on canvas)
• The early works of Tatlin • Communist idea about a perfect woman? • ‘Communist Venice’ in a classic setting?
The flowers of desire (collage, acryl on hardboard)
• The Gaudi’s garden • Wife of (?) painter
Lost Icons • Ives Klein – short story about him and his phylosophy
According to the well-‐known romantic convention, art is the lonely struggle of man against the whole world. The feeling of loneliness and that of being lost often appear in the tradition of painting as the metaphor of landscape empty of any human form, painted in cold or dark colours. Kelemen reflects on his tradition by re-‐creating the traditional landscape composition as a formal-‐stylistic problem. The common starting point of these works created with different techniques is the demonstration of the possibility of image manipulation within these indeterminate compositions that either bracket sharp contours and forms, or are completely devoid of them. In these works no value is associated with the feeling of loneliness, the narratives are not set in any identifiable, concrete landscape, one may not know whether one is awake or dreaming. What we face is the deconstruction of the idea of cosmic, all-‐pervading loneliness – without sentimentality.
Leap into the void Ives Klein (4 artworks) (digital print)
• About ‘leap into the void’ artwork by Ives Klein
Ghostrider (graphit, eraser)
Red Desert (oil on canvas)
Deconstructed Icons • What is deconstruction?
• How did the painted deconstructed and what.
“Destroy, so that you can build!” – said Lajos Kassák in one of his famous admonitions, and Károly Kelemen seems to take it seriously: his typical artistic attitude involves the appropriation of canonical artists and their iconic works, the demolition and rebuilding of their motifs. The pictures in this hall evoke some of the most influential figures of art history, names connected with artistic paradigm-‐shifts. However, nobody is evoked directly. According to the interpretation of Sándor Bortnyik – an activist and friend of Lajos Kassák – Marchel Duchamp appears in Kelemen’s works as Rrose Selavy, hidden behind a female mask that consciously questions gender identity, whereas Warhol appears under cover, in the sentences of his classic silent film, Blow Job. These elements become tangled because of the jungle of cross-‐references and their figurativity, which lead to constructions of an entirely new spirit: these elements become the contemporary starting points of the genesis of a world that is always reborn as something different.
Duchamp Rrose Selavy (graphit and eraser)
• Who was duchamp? • What is the photograph? • How does Kelemen relates himself to Duchamp
Blow job (graphit and eraser)
• Who was Andy Warhol? • What is the artowrk reflected here? • What is so interesting about the movie? • How did Kelemen reflect his relationship to the
movie?
Kassak-‐quotation (graphit and eraser)
• Who was Kassak? • What is the quotation and where is comes
from? • The relation of the quotation to all the art life
of Kelemen.
Kassak by Bortnik By Kelemen (oil on hardboard)
• Who was Kassak • Who was Bortnik • What are these paintings?
The Icon Found • The story of a Teddy Bear
• What is a teddy bear for Kelemen • Is he serious at all??
• What are the artists ‘mentioned’ in the room
Text from the wall: “Destroy, so that you can build!” – said Lajos Kassák in one of his famous admonitions, and Károly Kelemen seems to take it seriously: his typical artistic attitude involves the appropriation of canonical artists and their iconic works, the demolition and rebuilding of their motifs. The pictures in this hall evoke some of the most influential figures of art history, names connected with artistic paradigm-‐shifts. However, nobody is evoked directly. According to the interpretation of Sándor Bortnyik – an activist and friend of Lajos Kassák – Marchel Duchamp appears in Kelemen’s works as Rrose Selavy, hidden behind a female mask that consciously questions gender identity, whereas Warhol appears under cover, in the sentences of his classic silent film, Blow Job. These elements become tangled because of the jungle of cross-‐references and their figurativity, which lead to constructions of an entirely new spirit: these elements become the contemporary starting points of the genesis of a world that is always reborn as something different.
Intoxicated constructivist (acryl on hardboard, screws)
• Constructivism • Tatlin and Malevits
The bride of Malevits (oil on canvas)
• Suprematism • Malevits
Fairy Tale (oil on canvas)
• Picasso • Sezanne • Gaugin • Why is there a teddy? • How does the artist related himself to the
artists?
Recling nude on the beach (oil on canvas)
• Picasso • Sezanne • Gaugin • Why is there a teddy? • How does the artist related himself to the
artists?
Mont Saint Vicoire (oil on canvas)
• Picasso • Sezanne • Gaugin • Why is there a teddy? • How does the artist related himself to the
artists?
New Sower (oil on canvas)
• Picasso • Sezanne • Gaugin • Why is there a teddy? • How does the artist related himself to the
artists?
New Star (oil on canvas)
Cho-‐cho San and Pinkerman (acryl on bronze)
• The plot of the opera 'Madam Butterfly'
Teddy Prometheus (oil on canvas)
• The legend • The connection of the artist to the image
Rocky selfportrait with Teddy (oil on canvas)
Ironing Bear (oil on canvas)
• Which painting does that resemble?
Sex, Drugs, rock'n'roll (oil on canvas)
Love on number 8 blue (oil on canvas)
Kentaur (oil on canvas)
