Csontó Lajos: Hinterland under Construction
3 December 2008 – 17 January 2009The exhibition of Lajos Csontó in Inda Gallery emphasizes works that are lesser-known by the audience. There is a well developed photographic work behind the artist who has presented video installations recently. This exhibition gives an account of these ones in the photo month, when several other programs in Budapest and throughout the country analyse the development of the genre.
The photo series of the exhibition presents unusual methods of photography, partly in the reinterpretation of the postproduction and partly in the teamwork.
The background portraits contain blow-ups that are results of the enlargements of the details of earlier family and travel pictures. The expressions and gestures of the background figures on old, non-artistic photos inspired Csontó, who printed these fragments in large-scale despite the noise. The effect is therefore dual – we can see classical compositions of expressive portraits as well as feel the uncertainty of their origin because of the quality of the pictures. As opposed to artists like Tomas Ruff and Richard Prince, who treat found images, Csontó's genuineness is a result of his creation of the criticism and re-examination of his own archive by his pictures.
The 'History' serial has its connections with photo history. After the subtitled images of the Willie Doherty kind, or Blendy y Rosá's aspects re-composing historical settings, he examines the universality, fiction and local aspects of history. The word 'history', written arbitrarily on landscapes results the history making of the view, the fact that as audience, we have to accept the assumption that the scene is on the picture because it has something to do with history. Fact and supposition blends, community defines or may define its own past. Legend and fact become part of the same collective consciousness.
Brigitta Muladiart historian
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