Mark Fridvalszki by Chimera-Project

MARK FRIDVALSZKI Hagere Geometrie 2015/16

Chimera-Project Gallery Klauzál tér 5. H-1072 Budapest Patrick Urwyler Director & Owner +36 30 768 29 47 patrick@chimera-project.com www.chimera-project.com

C ATA L O G Index

Mark Fridvalszki

04–05

Intro I.: Hagere Geometrie

06–07

Intro II.: New, Grey, Polished Chrome

08–09

Hagere Geometrie-05, Hagere Geometrie-04

10–21

Hagere Geometrie-03

22–29

Material Study

30–33

In Archaic Mode

34–37

Ad Inexplorata

38–39

Found Symbols Written on I-Beam, Roswell 1947

40–41

Only Ruins Left

42–45

Marshalling Inc.

46–49

Apparatvs 50–53 Curriculum Vitae

54–55

List of Artworks

56–57

The Gallery

58–59

Marshalling Inc., 2016 (see pp. 46â&#x20AC;&#x201C;49)

M A R K F R I DVA L S Z K I l i v es and wor k s i n L e i p z i g a n d B e rl i n

This catalog provides insight into the artistic practice of Mark Fridvalszki, represented by Chimera-

Project Gallery with a special focus on his recent investigations, that led to the ongoing series entitled Hagere Geometrie. The catalog introduces the Hagere Geometrie series with short essays by Márió Z. Nemes (writer, critic, aesthetician) and Zsolt Miklósvölgyi (aesthetician). Furthermore it presents

a selection of the artist’s most important exhibitions, artworks and projects realized in the past two years.

Mark Fridvalszki (*1981 in Budapest) currently lives and works in Leipzig and Berlin. In his most recent works he creates abstract geometries and immaterial spaces that investigate the dramatic tensions

between ruin-like atmospheres and a sentient materialism. An important feature of the artist’s toolbar is an experimental approach towards different media: he mingles collages, wallpaper environments, found and manufactured objects, acryl transfer as well as other printing techniques into room filling installations. He remains strongly influenced by techno-culture, appropriation as well as postdigitalism, the geological “deep time” as well as contemporary theories of new materialism.

Fridvalszki is the co-initiator and graphic editor of the publishing project and cross-disciplinary

movement Technologie und das Unheimliche (or T+U, founded 2014). He is a graduate from the

Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and since 2014 a post-graduate student at the HGB Academy of Visual Art in Leipzig.

Fridvalszki participated in various exhibitions and art events, such as the MeetFactory, Prague (2016, also as artist in residence), Chimera-Project Gallery Budapest (2016) , HIT Gallery Bratislava (2015) ,

Vorspiel Transmediale Berlin 2016 (T+U X Zönotéka, 2016), Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart (T+U, 2015), Kisterem Gallery (2015), Lehrter 17 Berlin (2015), or Higgs Field Budapest (2014), among many others.

INTRO I. H A G E R E G E O ME T R IE M ár ió Z . Nem es

Mark Fridvalszki has elevated a purifying approach to form into an artistic programme, called, in his words, “haggard geometry” (‘Hagere Geometrie’). This haggardness, though, is also an

inversion of the puritanical tendencies of geometric abstraction, in the sense that it follows the strict principle of reduction only visually, while contextually “filling in” and “overloading” the purity itself.

In Fridvalszki’s case, it is not possible for forms to be abstracted from their origins or from the way

they are embedded in culture and technology, for the main source of inspiration for these post-digital collages is the aesthetic of industry and the military, meaning that the visual language is based on

logos, weapons and aeronautical forms and surfaces. In this context, leanness means “degradation

by depletion”, designed by the ruler of a post-apocalyptic world, in which the act of stripping things down to their internal framework and the fetish of metallic inorganicness are accorded meaning in a

panorama imbued by “civilisation criticism”. The over-riding presence of grey (and greyness) is not the consequence of a pure aesthetic, but the embodiment of the alienated greyscale of the technological twilight of humanity, in which extra-terrestrial visitors (the “Grey ones”) and the melancholy of geological consciousness come together in a vision of ruins and desert.

This text was realized on the occasion of Mark Fridvalszki’s exhibition at Kisterem Gallery, Budapest 2016 (pp. 22-29).

Hagere Geometrie-03 (series of 16), 2015

INTRO II. N E W, G R EY, P OL IS H E D C H R OM E Zs olt M ik lós v öl g y i

New, grey, polished chrome surfaces. Gradients, grid landscapes, parametric CAD model nets and the sublime, alien geometry of military aviation. Or, to be more precise: the material ruins of these ideas. They are fragments, scattered details in time and space of a past that failed to manifest, or future

that never existed, yet nevertheless evoke feelings of nostalgia. This retrofuturistic frame of mind not

only resolves culturally ingrained notions of time, but in the words of Gaston Bachelard, is capable of opening up a space that “contains compressed time within its countless alveoli”.

Mark Fridvalszki’s solo exhibition investigates these peculiar, techno-archaeologically inspired

aesthetic codes. Within the imaginary geography of these aesthetics, the desert climate of the Persian Gulf and the molecular spheres of dust, oil and oxidised metal combine with the sterile a engineering phantasies of the dawn of the Computer Age. The works of New, Grey, Polished Chrome aim to

combine the apparent discrepancies between the imaginary and the real, the digital and the physical,

the bygone and the futuristic, art and technology. Parallelly, the orders of these patterns, surfaces, and shapes are inspired by a curiosity about the “geometry of the invisible”. These resources are derived

not from the inverse of the cultural history of the “visible”, but from utilitarian designs of techniques of

“vanishing”, “slinking” and “acceleration”. They are derived, therefore, not from a mold originated from art history’s references of constructivism and of geometric abstraction, but from one that is inspired by industrial design, aerodynamics, and the visual world of early 3D modeling software.

Regarding the use of materials, these images follow a certain aesthetic strategy that aims to

irritate or provoke the synthetic phantasy regimes that seemingly dominate contemporary visual culture. In doing so, they propose the notion of new materiality that is highly aware of its digital

predeterminations. This visual consciousness is noticeable in the skeuomorph glance of metallic

material surfaces imitated by grey-toned xerox prints, as well as in traces of robustness caused by the interference between the digital glitch and the calculated printing error.

Just as the “The Ghost of Baghdad” is released from the digital simulacrum of the ‘80s —

encapsulated in cast metal as the zenith of “High Technology” for an instant, before submerging into

variable phases of the “base material” of the desert — the works of New, Grey, Polished Chrome also

mediate between the hygienic space of graphics editing software and rustic, ozone-rich photocopiers, converging at the space of the image and its sensual materiality.

This text was realized on the occasion of Mark Fridvalszki’s solo exhibition at Chimera-Project Gallery, Budapest 2016 (pp. 10-21).

H A G E R E G E O ME T R IE -05 H A G E R E G E O ME T R IE -04 Chim er a- P r ojec t Ga l l e ry, 2 0 1 6

Hagere Geometrie-05, 2016

Series of 3, acrylic transfer, canvas

50x70cm / each (iron shelfs, ~15x70cm)

Wallpaper, A3 digital prints, ~400x300cm Hagere Geometrie-04, 2016

Series of 16, digital print, collage, 21×29,7cm / each

In situ environment: agro foil, sand, parachord, Sound by FOR. (3’03’’, looped) – Solo exhibition “New, Grey, Polished Chrome” at Chimera-Project Gallery, Budapest, 2016.

xxx xxx xxx

Hagere Geometrie-05 (series of 3), 2016

Installation view: Hagere Geometrie-04 (series of 14), 2016

Hagere Geometrie-04 (series of 14), 2016

Installation view: Hagere Geometrie-04 (series of 14), 2016

Installation views: Hagere Geometrie-04 (series of 14), 2016

H A G E R E G E O ME T R IE -03 Ki s t er em G allery, Bu d a p e s t, 2 0 1 5

Mixed media installation Hagere Geometrie-03, 2015

Series of 16, digital print, collage, 21×29,7cm / each

Wallpaper, A3 digital prints – Group show “Inverz” at Kisterem Gallery, Budapest, 2015.

Installation view: Hagere Geometrie-03 (series of 16), 2015

Hagere Geometrie-03 (series of 16), 2015

M AT E R I A L S T U D Y 2016

Material Study, 2016

Series of 9, digital print on aged paper, collage 21x29,7cm / each

Material Study (series of 9), 2016

I N A R C H A IC MO D E M eet F ac t or y, Pra g u e , 2 0 1 6

Mixed-media installation: Wallpaper: digital collage, digital print, 3,8x11,8m

Panels: digital graphic, UV ink print on dibond, 100x100x3cm

Sound: appropriation from Klaus Schulze “Timewind” 1975 (Brain) 59:13

Group show “The portent of light” at MeetFactory, Prague, 2016

M A R K F R I DVA L S Z K I I N A R C H A IC MO D E Ja r o Var go

The following text about Mark Fridvalszkis large scale wall installation was written on the occasion of the group show “The portent of light” at MeetFactory, Prague, 2016. Ancient cave paintings, emerging from the depth of time at the beginning of human culture could

represent either gods, aliens, or entities from other dimensions of time and space. The inspiration of

these uncanny figures is veiled with a shadow of oblivion, they could be fantasies pr real events and

beings. “In Archaic Mode” is a collection of the most famous ‘alien’ cave paintings, digitally composed into a collage. These ancient signs represent a universal timescale, a knot of deep past and far

future - they were created thousand of years ago, yet they depict the imagery of future technologies,

timespace travels and exoterrestrial visitors. The images question the evolution of the Homo Sapiens

as a race and fantasize about the potential ‘missing link’. The wallpaper, composed of digitally printed A3 sheets, follows the post-digital tactics and the ‘aesthetic of a copyshop’, using basic filters to

reach the ‘psychedelic’ moment of the whole image. It is an artificial cave situation which combines

ancient and new technologies, the real and the pseudo. The dibond pictures of Gauguin (“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?“) is inversed, overlaid with geometric patterns taken from crop circles (squares). The sound is an appropriation from Klaus Schulze’s Timewind, composed in 1975.

In Archaic Mode, 2016, details

A D I N E X P L OR ATA 2015

Ad Inexplorata (series of 5), 2015

F O U N D SY MB O L S WR IT T E N O N I - B E A M, R OS WE L L 19 4 7 2015

Found Symbols Written on I-Beam, Roswell 1947 (series of 4), 2015

O N LY R U I NS L E F T HI T G aller y, B ra ti s l a v a , 2 0 1 5

In situ environment Into the cellar of the post-archeology, we

follow the stalker’s steps into past and future memories. In this shelter-atmosphere, an

environment for dreamlike spatiotemporal

experience unfolds by the glow of a flashlight. The psychedelic ‘meta-collage’ draws from prehistoric evidence, recent events as well as prophecies about what is yet to come, triggering associative leaps of a holistic worldview.

For HIT Gallery, Mark Fridvalszki creates an

in situ room filling collage, using appropriated motives that can be explored individually and are emphasized by a corresponding

soundscape. Saint Leidal The 2nd composed the latter after Eduard Artemyev’s Stalker (1979). (Text: HIT Gallery) – Solo show “Only Ruins Left” at HIT Gallery, Bratislava, 2015.

Installation views: Only Ruins Left, 2015

M A R S H A L LIN G IN C . Trans m ediale Be rl i n , 2 0 1 6

In situ environment, mixed media, size variable, 2016 Marshalling Inc. operated by T+U. This event is part of the program ‘transmediale & CTM Vorspiel 2016’.

With its in situ installation at Zönotéka the art collective Technologie und das Unheimliche (T+U) aims to set forth the hidden implications of both: the power structure that lurks behind the “sterile” idea of

the office environment, and the contraversive corporate aesthetics of the arms industry. The exhibition and event series evolves around this unique aesthetic tension, that vibrates between the shell-like,

encapsulating ambience of corporate lobby settings, and the real identity of power structures. This identity becomes ever more palpable through the obscuring rhetoric of architectural and design

practices. The team of Marshalling Inc. presents a visual, sound and fragrant environment inspired by flashy stock-archives, neutral and martial backgrounds as well as their own, uncanny officephantasies undermined with hints of hidden admiration.

Team: Máté Feles, Mark Fridvalszki, Adam Hruby, Krisztina Hunya, Peter Lowas, Joshua McNemara, Zsolt Miklósvölgyi, Márió Z. Nemes, Dominika Trapp, András G. Varga, Nora Vera, Nullius in Verba

Installation views: Marshalling Inc., 2016

A P PA R AT VS The M us eum , L e i p z i g , 2 0 1 6

Mark Fridvalszki & Aleksandr Delev Mixed media environment Wallpaper: A3 digital prints ~0,6x14m

Object: iron, enamel paint ~75x75x190cm

Boards: text by A.D., digital print on aluminium 30x30cm

Frame: digital print 70x100cm

Soundscape: cut from Pink Floyd ’’Welcome to the Machine’’ 1975

Edited by Nullius in Verba (T+U)

APPARATVS - Text by Zsolt Miklósvölgyi Recall Vladimir Tattlin’s Monument to the Third International from the beginning of the 20th century. Then consider the Il Continuo Monumento produced by the Italian Superstudio in the ‘60s. Finally, contemplate the futuristic visualizations of King Abdullah’s Economic City. Beyond the accidental

morphological congenialities, we see proposed utopian spatial imaginations quarrelling with each

other. In addition to the obvious ideological and cultural differences, these designs differ both in how

they organize the spaces of imagination, and, even moreso, in the gestures that lie behind the process of organization. We find antagonistic movements behind identical formations and structures. While

one set of these movements mobilizes, integrates, optimizes and conjoins, the other one excludes,

separates or incorporates. The latter movement characterizes the operation of those CBSs, offshore enclaves and Free Trade Zones (FTZs) that thrive in late capitalist metropolises and are intertwined

via a dense network of planetary-scaled IT systems. Examining from physical, political and economic perspectives, these urban complexes are positioned in the hybrid space that can be found between blurred boundaries of reality and imagination. They lie beyond spheres that can be grasped by the human mind or by the naked eye, on the hithermost side of an already-fulfilled utopian/dystopian

destination. Their irritating efficacy draws on the fact that structurally they can be approached only through their surfaces, pictures, eventrations and projections. They are spatial apparatuses whose only evidences are given in their precisely-adjusted silhouettes and in their ethereal visualizations,

since their inner operating mechanisms are constantly locked upon themselves. In this sense, their topographical strategy is archaic: attacking outwardly and closing inwardly. The next stage of this

over-aesthetized architectural tyranny is the StockCity that combines VR technologies with data and architectural visualization in order to create the imaginary cities of stags and investors. In StockCity

the height of the buildings is not defined by the set of architectural regulations, but by the amount of

the capital they want to depict. Its weather is not affected by the atmosphere of the Earth, but by the

irrational whims of the financial markets. The aesthetic subject of StockCity is not Baudlaire’s flâneur,

but the Cartesian user of the Oculus Rift. Those boundaries that had supposedly separated the spatial softwares and the hardwares of the city are blurring into each other. These liquefying notional and

physical contours are craving for new metaphors and paradigms, like the theory of extrastatecraft, developed by Keller Easterling, that tries to unfold a critical interpretation of infrastructure spaces. Or like the APPARATVS, created by Aleksandr Delev and Mark Fridvalszki, that demonstrates the tremendous and terrifying crystallization of this new spatiality.

M A R K F R I DVA L S Z K I *1981 in B udap e s t, H u n g a ry | l i v e s a n d works i n Lei pzi g and B erl i n, Germany

STUDIES 2014 - 2017 2009 - 2011 2004 - 2009

Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, Germany Postgraduate “Meisterschüler” in Media Arts (Helmut Mark) Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria Master of Arts in Graphic Art (Gunter Damisch) University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria Studies in Graphic Art (Sigbert Schenk)

AWARDS & GRANTS 2015 2014 2013 2011 2009 2007

Shortlist Chimera Art Award 2015, Budapest, Hungary Nomination for Esterházy Art Prize Uniqa, Budapest, Hungary Invitation for a booklet & workshop, Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany Nomination for Esterházy Art Prize Uniqa, Budapest, Hungary Nomination for Esterházy Art Prize Uniqa, Budapest, Hungary Nomination for Walter Koschatzky Kunstpreis Rotary Club, Vienna, Austria Stiegl Beerlabel Award Stiegl, Vienna, Austria Vivatis Holding Illustration Award Vivatis, Vienna, Austria

RESIDENCIES 2015

Meetfactory, Prague, Czech Republic

SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION) 2016 2015 2014 2013 2011 2010

“APPARATVS” w/ Aleksandr Delev , The Museum, Leipzig, Germany. “New, Grey, Polished Chrome”, Chimera-Project, Budapest, Hungary. “Marshalling Inc.” Operated by T+U, Zönotéka, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany. “Only Ruins Left” , HIT Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia. “O.T.” w/ Tibor Horváth, Görlitzer Park, Berlin, Germany. “Please mother, can’t we go some place where there isn’t any sky?”, Labor, Budapest, Hungary. Presentation @ Igor Metropol, Igor Metropol, Budapest, Hungary. “Raum Evolution I.”, F56, Berlin, Germany. “F.M./Overmind/Silan”, Wndrlnd, Budapest, Hungary. “2nd Reborn”, LLLPP Factory, Budapest, Hungary. “Babel / Silan” with János Iván Kárpáti, Szatyor, Budapest, Hungary. “Techno-Escape”, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria. “Orbital Period”, Telep Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. “Deep Horizon”, Studio Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. “Flowing & Core”, 1x1 Board, Budapest, Hungary.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION) 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012

“The Portent of Light”, Gallery Meetfatory, Prague, Czech Republic. “Volkshymne”, Gallery Nod, Prague, Czech Republic. “Inverz”, Kisterem Gallery, Budapest , Hungary. “BEWAHREN SPEICHERN PRÄSENTIEREN”, Lage Egal Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Enigma, Mzin, Leipzig, Germany. T+U vol. III. “Enigma” Booklet Launch & Show, Project Space Akademie Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. Accumulation of Matter, Lehrter 17, Berlin, Germany. “Around Analogies” with T+U, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. The Thunder Lizard Was Never Extinct, Zönotéka, Berlin, Germany. Invisible Press, IMI, Istanbul, Turkey. CCCV, Supermarket Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. “Pensive Pictures, Goodbye!”, Higgs Field, Budapest, Hungary. Technologie und das Unheimliche / Fanzine Show, Higgs Field, Budapest, Hungary. “Raum Evolution II.”, F56, Berlin, Germany. “Patron”, FKSE, Budapest, Hungary. “My Little Cloud”, Dovin Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. “Budapest Art Expo 2013”, Malom, Szentendre, Hungary. “Loop”, Virág Judit Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. “The Stars Look Different Today”, Dovin Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. “SEJT”, Gödör/MODEM, Budapest/Debrecen, Hungary.

L I ST O F A R T WOR K S Art wor k det ails

Hagere Geometrie-05, 2016

pp. 10–13

Series of 3, acrylic transfer on canvas

50x70cm / each (iron shelfs, ~15x70cm)

Wallpaper, A3 digital prints, ~400x300cm (Photo: Norbert Juhász)

Hagere Geometrie-04, 2016

pp. 14–21

Series of 16, digital print, collage, 21×29,7cm / each

(Photo: Norbert Juhász) New, Grey, Polished Chrome, 2016

pp. 18–21

In situ environment: agro foil, sand, parachord, sound: FOR.

(Photo: Norbert Juhász) Hagere Geometrie-03, 2015

pp. 22–29

Series of 16, digital print, collage, 21×29,7cm / each

Wallpaper, A3 digital prints (Photo: Miklós Sulyok) Material Study, 2016

Series of 9, digital print on aged paper, collage 21x29,7cm / each

pp. 30–33

In Archaic Mode, 2016

pp. 34–37

Wallpaper: digital collage, digital print 3,8x11,8m

Panels: digital graphic, UV ink print on Dibond 100x100x3cm

(Photo: Tomáš Souček) Ad Inexplorata, 2015

Series of 5, acrylic transfer on canvas

pp. 38–39

30x40cm / each

Found Symbols Written on I-Beam, Roswell 1947, 2015 Series of 5, acrylic transfer on canvas

pp. 40–41

30x40cm / each

Only Ruins Left, 2015 In situ environment

pp. 42–45

(Photo: Andrej Zabkay) Marshalling Inc., 2016

In situ installation, mixed media, size variable

pp. 46–49

Operated by T+U

(Photo: Krisztina Turna) Apparatvs, 2016 (with Aleksandr Delev) Mixed media environment (Photo: Bence Bakai)

pp. 50–52

CHIMERA-PROJECT GALLERY Ab out

The Chimera-Project Gallery is a program-gallery founded 2013 in Budapest. The galleryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profile ranges from neo-avantgarde to recent conceptually grounded practices, representing artists from the CEE region. Through its Swiss-Hungarian founders Patrick Urwyler (Art Historian, CH) and BoglĂĄrka Mittich (Sociologist, HU) the gallery operates on an international level and is dedicated to a professional thematic exhibition program that generates a meaningful discourse in contemporary art around relevant artistic and social topics. Our main professional goal is to support international exchange. The annual program consists of two interrelated sections of exhibitions: one section we realize in our own gallery in Budapest, inviting local and international positions and the other section takes place abroad through various projects. We built up an exchange program, based on bilateral exhibition series, called Inter Art and we established an international award, the Chimera Art Award. We believe, that international visibility is very important for artists, especially from the CEE region. This is the point where artists, institutions and art professionals have to strengthen collaboration and build bridges to get visible on the global scene.

Patrick Urwyler

Bogi Mittich

Director & Owner

Gallery Manager

+36 30 768 29 47

+36 30 682 32 79

patrick@chimera-project.com

bogi@chimera-project.com

www.chimera-project.com