Eliost, Karen (szerk.): Szombathy. Városjelek 1971 - 2012. Művészet Malom, Szentendre, 2012. szeptember 28 - november 11. (Szentendre, 2012)
Előszó
Preface Starting in 1971, Bálint Szombathy’s exploration of urban visual semiotics has belonged to the artist’s major fields of interests over the course of a career that has, in both linguistic and ideological terms, embraced a wide range of activities and mediums. Inspired by the novel linguistic approaches of a momentous era and considering the implications of contemporary structuralist and semiological research, Szombathy sought to locate his visual arts activities outside the enclosed spaces of studios and exhibition venues, i.e. in outdoor public space. Such a decision was also in line with the actions that he had been performing in urban or natural environments. Never having concerned himself with the practice of painting or sculpture, the artist took note of spontaneous linguistic phenomena, visual sign formations left by anonymous authors in the urban sphere of life, that fully met his expectations of painting and sculpture and which, on being photographed, could be accepted by the artist, as well as others, as his own work. In that sense, without actually having to paint or sculpt, he was able to produce his own paintings and sculptural works, through photography capturing a given linguistic-aesthetic phenomenon and thus raising it from its environment. With such a modernist gesture of artistic appropriation, he created a collection of several hundred shots, each having as its subject a found origin, i.e., an objet trouvé. The majority of the visual phenomena that he found most intriguing appeared on walls of buildings. Among them were those empty, rectangular or circular areas that remained after the carriers of the actual messages - advertisements or company signs - had been removed, or that came about as the result of corrosion or flaking paint. Examining the diverse processes of linguistic erosion, he set up categories, all having a common feature: their one-time content-carrying function had transformed into a sign function, taking on meta-linguistic qualities. Szombathy drew a parallel between these void surfaces and the artistic-philosophical problematic of the empty canvas, the well-known conclusion of the linguistic-reductionist endeavours of Concrete, Fundamental, and Suprematist painting. The empty surfaces enclosed in wooden or metal frames represented a separate subcategory, pointing to the problematic of canvas framing. He also spotted a new type of empty surface emerging in today’s big cities: the result of (often repeated) over-paintings of various illegal texts of predominantly political background, a practice that has become more widespread recently. While exploring the linguistic material found on fagades and walls, he also discovered brush-painted coloursample patterns, which seemed to correspond to the basic motifs of Abstract Painting. He identified the ephemeral mosaics of colour left by anonymous muralists as analogous with the linguistic standards of high art. Offering sculptural analogies, a third, larger group of works is comprised of sculptural forms that were originally meant to serve utilitarian goals, also documented in the urban sphere of life. Just like the painted patches on walls or the empty traces of removed signs, these three-dimensional forms - power cables - denote transitional conditions rather than final states. The photos attest to an aesthetic quality that may be termed ephemeral, being in a state of transition and evanescence. The phenomena photographed a few decades ago have disappeared over time, as the cables were built into the walls of buildings a couple of days later. The artist found them just in time, to provide 'physical evidence’ of their existence, attributing aesthetic qualities to their casual forms. The exhibition showcases 40 vintage photos from the 1970s. Several hundred other, more recent pieces are presented in the form of digital projections or digital prints on canvas and paper. Along with a comprehensive selection of visual material, the present catalogue includes an essay by Budapest and London-based art historians Maja and Reuben Fowkes, providing an international context for the exhibited body of work and commenting on all relevant aspects. Karen Eliot Editor 6
