NAGYMOLNAR - THE GEOMETRY OF LIGHT - OPENING SPEECH OF THE EXHIBITION
Light is high-frequency optical radiation consisting of elemental particles known as photons; depending on the wavelength, it generates visual sensations that match the colours of the spectrum. The dual nature of light stems from the fact that it can be defined both with properties that are typical of waves and equally with those that apply to particles. This peculiar dichotomy also appears in the use of light and in its associated attributes. Radiant light can be dangerous to people, even categorically harmful. This is a substance that we should rightly handle with caution. And yet it is light that makes life possible; light serves humankind as a metaphor of hope, joy and happiness. Pure white, weightless, elusive, immaterial light has held symbolic meaning since ancient times. It is the most abstract quality conceivable, a cosmic symbol, a metaphysical formula, from which all the mysteries of the world can be broken down, and to which they all lead back.
In 1620 the English philosopher Francis Bacon published a treatise entitled Novum Organum, in which he posited two important components of practical application in the arts and in expanding our knowledge of the world; he named these components “experimenta lucifera” and “experimenta fructifera”. Bacon’s admiration for mechanical art (what we today would call “technology-based art”) lay in the fact that it consisted of both the light-shedding (experimenta lucifera) and the fruit-bearing (experimenta fructifera) experiments. Bacon’s “fruit-bearing experiment”, of course, had nothing to do with primary production practices or organic farming, but rather referred to what in modern terminology is described as creative artistic experimentation. Meanwhile, with his other term, “experimenta lucifera”, Bacon alluded to studies dealing with or pertaining to light, so in his book he envisioned the kind of artist who could use light as a creative medium.
The virtues of the Mysterlight series, jointly created by Krisztián Nagy and Csaba Molnár, also rest on the duality of lucifera and fructifera, on the conversion of an uncontrollable medium into something controllable, shapable, transformable. The aesthetic context for the works is provided by irregular regularity, by the relationship between the aleatory or random and strict mathematical order. Though the path of light is governed by a specific algorithm or program, there are never two consecutive moments when we face the same spectacle in the immersive tunnel of light that absorbs our gaze and drags it deep into the heart of the image. Ever newer and different constellations are formed from the abstract geometric figures cast from light into repeating patterns. As the compositional elements are modified through rotation, geometric translation, and shifts in scale, they bring about a unique sense of vertigo, whose dynamism erupts from the dual nature of light, both physical, lending depth to the shapes, and illusory, experienced only indirectly. Light creates its own environment, while simultaneously rendering it fluid and immaterial.
If we regard the glass sculptures of Péter Botos as constructions in the round, offering different faces and perspectives from every direction, the works of Krisztián Nagy and Csaba Molnár are boxes of light bound on all four sides, in which the happening, the “event horizon”, comes to life in the interior of the composition. The astonishing complexity of the structures, composed from simple, elementary shapes, conjure up cosmic associations. The light emanating from an indefinable direction delineates concentric forms reminiscent of the waves formed by casting a stone into a well, spatial grids sliding into one another like towers or composed of crystalline segments, tunnels of time and space gyrating vertiginously around an irrational axis, or funnel-like formations plunging towards the black-hole-like depths at the heart of the composition. The pieces of the Mysterlight series presented here by Krisztián Nagy and Csaba Molnár possess a magical geometry; the kaleidoscopic shapes that fill the compositions recall the forms of distant pulsars, planets and galaxies, and suggest connections with popular culture, with electroacoustic music, with books on galactic journeys, and with scientific and fantasy films. The disquieting visuality conveyed by the works flirts with the transmission of some kind of message, perhaps a form of physical regularity or a simple principle of colour theory. The formal repertoire deployed when designing the compositions is always based on a heuristic creative process. With this knowledge in mind, the creative duo use light in their works both quantitatively and qualitatively. By multiplying forms reduced to their most essential elements and by combining the simplest geometric motifs and basic colours, the permutation of the two brings about a system that is encoded in time. It is the disconcerting experience of the tension between the definite and indefinite nature of the spectacle that makes these works so revelatory.
During our encounter with the works of the artists presented here in the Zsdrál Gallery, we may rightly be struck with the sense that the magical interrelationships between nature and human creations are being revealed in the exhibition space. Perhaps this is why the hypothetical workspace of both Péter Botos and NagyMolnar should remind us of both the chaotic laboratory of a medieval alchemist and the neat and well-organised workshop of a modern inventor or research engineer.
The inhabitants of New Atlantis, to quote once more from the state theoretical and political utopia of Francis Bacon, proudly showed off to every stranger who strayed into their city all the wondrous inventions that utilised light in a novel way. The citizens of New Atlantis gave an enthusiastic account of their discoveries that combined mystery with exacting science.
“We have also perspective-houses [reported the inhabitants], where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations; and of all colours; and out of things uncoloured and transparent, we can represent unto you all several colours; not in rainbows, (as it is in gems, and prisms,) but of themselves single. We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. Also all colourations of light; all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colours all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light originally from divers bodies. We procure means of seeing objects afar off; as in the heaven and remote places; and things afar off as near; making feigned distances. We have also helps for the sight, far above spectacles and glasses in use. (…) We make artificial rain-bows, halo’s, and circles about light. We represent also all manner of reflexions, refractions, and multiplications of visual beams of objects.” [end of quote]
The formal and technical repertoire that Francis Bacon dreamt up in the seventeenth century in the form of a fictional novel has become reality in every detail in the third decade of the twenty-first century. Besides the satisfying optimism of the results of civilisation, however, there is one thing that we must not forget. Namely, the recognition that what we can see at the exhibition are not technical or scientific constructions, but works of art. These works do not simply invite us to interact with them, they compel us to. Without the active participation of the viewer, the beholder, the visitor, the aesthetic experience they offer would be partial, deficient, incomplete.
I therefore advise that we should not only look at, but observe, experience and jointly engage in the extraordinary works presented here at the Zsdrál Gallery, which make use of light as their creative medium. Thank you for listening. I hereby open the exhibition of the Nagy and Molnár duo.
