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Hungarian artist Márta Kucsora ‘s latest solo exhibition, “ Never step into the same river twice ”, opened on 8 November at Cobra Gallery. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in China, covering a number of large-scale works from recent years, and demonstrating to the audience the development of her technique and the constant iteration of her creative consciousness.
Among the many galleries on both sides of the Suzhou River, the Cobra Gallery is undoubtedly one of the most special. The historical conservation building where the gallery is located was formerly the vault of the Bank of China, and the interior space retains the coarse texture of the original structure of the building, and the open design on the top of the space holds up a broader art space, and this rough but not rough interior design also makes the whole exhibition space more transparent and bright, creating a field where people and art breathe together.
Distinguishing itself from the white box space of traditional galleries, Cobra Gallery starts from the positioning of a design gallery, utilising modern design furniture, antique furniture and contemporary art together to create an authentic interior scene. Every image that the eye incorporates can become a complete corner of the home environment. It can be said that since the moment the eye comes to the walls of the gallery, the viewer has entered the art world built by CoBrA.
‘Never step into the same river twice’, in the view of Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, change is the basic law of the universe. There is no such thing as an eternally unchanging dong in the world; all things are in a constant state of change and flow. Through the works of Márta Kucsora in this exhibition, we can peep into the artist's perspective to re-conceptualise the change of all things.
In her work, Márta presents us with unnoticed points of reflection: is our existence, by its very nature, an endurance under natural time? We are travelling through the interior of time, with no origin or destination; everything is constantly moving and changing.
Since 1952, when art critic Harold Rosenberg called Jackson Pollock's paintings ‘Action Painting’, how the artist talks to the canvas during the creative process has become one of the main themes of Pollock's work. Since Jackson Pollock called his paintings ‘Action Painting’, how the artist talks to the canvas in the process of creation has become the object of Pollock's reflection.
Márta Kucsora creates her work by laying the canvas flat on the ground, layering pre-selected types of pigments by pouring or spraying them on the canvas, each one diluted in a unique way, and then moving and lifting the canvas repeatedly to make these scattered pigments flow in different directions.
Márta Kucsora is a female abstract expressionist who combines personal emotion, performance and material research. Her work brings a completely different visual experience. Beyond the usual feminine traits of delicacy and sensitivity, there is a most intuitive impact, both from the medium of paint, the effect of colours and the action of painting. Márta Kucsora uses painting to express the timelessness and importance of movement from her point of view, creating a 21st century plain of lyrical abstraction.
In contrast to the stillness of easel paintings, Márta Kucsora refers back to herself in the process of creating the movement in her paintings. From the very beginning of the work, the movement of the painting is accompanied until this dynamism is once again transmitted from the body to the canvas. Márta Kucsora precisely plans the movement, the time in the creation and controls it in its entirety, waiting for the paint to change. She controls the natural flow of the mixed pigments on the canvas with the help of gravity through the difference in density between the different types of liquid pigments. When the different pigments interact with each other, the resulting chemical reaction creates unplanned and beautiful images, with interwoven details that remind the viewer of a moment frozen in nature.
For Márta Kucsora, the process of creation is in fact also a process of transformation, whereby the creation of the image continues after the artist's act of creation has ceased: a constant and subtle flow of pigments under the force of gravity, which over time creates a new texture as it dries out.
This duality between the release of the natural state of the paint and the methodical design of the paintwork creates a vivid image. The resulting works have a rhythmic groove like abstract poetry, a throbbing emotional rhythm that gradually transforms into a visual code, a puzzle to be solved.
In addition to the artists who revolutionised abstraction in the 1950s and 1960s, the practice of calligraphy by another group of surrealists indirectly provided a second layer of pigment to Márta's paintings. Inspired by the gelatinous additives used in calligraphy, Márta began to ‘destroy’ the top layer of pigment after it had dried by scraping and washing it, creating a cracked, flaking surface, and then laying down a new layer that absorbed and reacted with the previous layer of pigment in a process of absorption and reaction with the previous layer. The new pigment is then applied, absorbing and reacting with the previous layer of pigment, thus creating a new visual effect.
In Márta Kucsora's paintings we can see both the moment of solidification and the power and vigour that extends through the paint. As seen in the diptych Understandably, Therefore / Obviously, Therefore, a momentary scene may lead you into the jungle, as if caressing the texture of the trees at close range; after drawing your gaze closer, you are suddenly pulled into the pouring water, resisting the resistance of nature in order to find breath.
Completed in 2015, See Yourself in a New Light is like fireworks in the darkness of the night. The entire canvas is covered in black, rendering the texture of the night, and the traces left by the bright colours of the pigments are like the flashes of fireworks that suddenly appear in the night sky. As the title of the work suggests, everyone's face is illuminated under the fireworks of the night.
The Secret Of Staying Hidden is made of the artist's lesser-used black and white pigments, which, compared to the other coloured images, appear to step out of the natural narrative and take on a more metallic feel. Pigments from opposite directions of the canvas form two forces, swirling and wrestling with each other in the centre of the canvas, and the flow and splash of the pigments form a highly tense gesture.
In Márta Kucsora's simulation of nature, we can ‘see the world in the presence of a single object’, and the unanchored narrative allows us to flow freely within it, leaving it up to the artist to negotiate with logic and fight with our hearts, and enjoying the dynamics, organising the blocks in a dream-like scenario. The artist has left it all to the artist to enjoy this dynamic, organising blocks of imprints in a dream scene.
