Texts
Beatrix Bakondy deals with space. As simple as that opening sentence of my essay on Beatrix Bakondy’s artistic work may sound, the artistic assertion underlying it is all the more complex. Given the diversity and multi-layered complexity of the spatial references in her work, it is worth reflecting on some of the fundamental systems of references and relationships that underpin what is commonly referred to as a theory of space. It is rare enough to find such distinctive and clearly formulated works that do so consistently and therefore allow such space for thought in the first place.
Like faint memories the delicately glowing gossamer webs of mist emerge from the shadows;
they snuggle up against the separating glass of the picture frame and suck at the viewer’s glancing gaze as if a promise, once given but now forgotten,
slumbered in his eyes and now, finally,
the time had come for that promise to be kept.
What we have here is an apartment in Vienna’s 2nd District that is in the process of being transformed into an artist’s studio, the eponymous Atelier. A camera slowly pans across the circumstances on site. It records colours and surfaces, tracks along walls and windows, and captures the mood of the (autumnal) lighting.
The movement of the camera opens up a space which, at the very first glance, fails to reveal any conspicuous or salient features. However, the time that elapses during the panning shot does reveal that all is not quite as it seems here.
A city’s urbanity is derived from the fact that it represents a space filled with
opportunities. You only have to walk around the corner and already everything’s completely different. Sometimes it’s so different it’s hard to imagine it could be that different. Besides, no city is exclusively urban. City dwellers like to make their city more village-like, finding quiet places within it where they are not taken by surprise, where everything somehow seems more manageable. So a city can also be viewed from the vantage point of how it manages to balance static and changeable moments (whether the static aspect predominates or whether change has got out of hand).
In Beatrix Bakondy’s works we encounter the phenomenon of space
paradoxically through its very absence.
Can space exist without matter?
Is the existence of time conditional
on the existence of space?