10 minute read
Pol Kurucz
T H E N E O N C L A S S I C A L W O R K S O F
THE NEON-CLASSICAL WORKS OF
Pol Kurucz
BY KATE ZALIZNOCK
Bright hues, angular silhouettes and evocative imagery are signature elements of Brazil-based photographer Pol Kurucz. Born in Hungary and raised in Paris, Kurucz has traveled the world to cultivate a creative vision that has so far landed him on the pages of Vogue, ELLE, GQ, The Guardian, CNN, BBC, Dazed, and Hi-Fructose among numerous others. 2019 saw Kurucz claim third place in the Sony World Photography Awards with his series, “The Normals,” which the artist described below:
“By definition most people are ‘normal.’ Some want to be different and follow the norms of a specific social or cultural tribe; they are normal too. And there are those who would laugh at nonsensical categorizations, who don’t believe in or live by conventions, who create their own reality and live it naturally. They are the subject of the photographer’s last photo series: genuine eccentrics, weirdos and lunatics who, in the eyes of the photographer, are the new normals. Shooting for this last series took place entirely in the Kolor Studio in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, where all the sets and accessories were built by the Kolor Art Collective. Most models, performers, and actors featured in the photos come from the city’s humanist microcosm and themselves belong to the redefined group of the eccentrics.”
You have explored many creative outlets. What draws you to digital photography as your current chosen medium? It’s not the only medium that I’m working with; we work with photography, with animation, and with shorts, which is like video cinema. And the idea is always to tell some kind of story. When I was a kid—I didn’t know it but just talked a few months ago with my aunt, who’s a doctor (a podiatrist)—and I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fiction, and I was telling all kinds of bullshit, or “stories,” making up stuff and I didn’t know that it wasn’t true. Where did I go for two, three hours? Where did I disappear? I made up that I was abducted by aliens and then we played, you know, in a cosmic playground and we exchanged our eyes to see the world and I was really believing that. And I spent my childhood listening and looking at stories, so I’m kind of addicted to that so anything I do I’m trying to tell stories because otherwise I find things a bit boring.
What nurtures your creativity? Nothing. No, it’s just that that’s a very strange question because that would mean that you need stuff to create what is creativity; I know what it is to create, to do something of your own that is probably not copied, and that’s like being. It needs to get out of you. So, it’s not nurtured; it’s something that needs to happen. There might be hidden kinds of techniques and stuff, some hidden things that help me do what I do, but it’s pretty much an urge.
What’s been one of your favorite r e sponses to your work, whether it be press or someone who’s experienced it and had a response that struck you? “I want to live in your photos…” That’s the best compliment. Sometimes I get it once or twice a month, and this is what I want. I want people to want to go into an imaginary world, which is mine, and it provides the kind of emotions that they like to find in life that they probably get through making love, watching movies, and being drugged.
Who are some of your favorite visual artists? Bob Wilson, for example, I like him very much. I like Alejandro Jodorowsky, the filmmaker, a lot. I like the Swedish filmmaker, Roy Gunderson. I like the painter, René Magritte, a lot. And I love Pastelae [Swedish artist Josefin Jonsson]; she’s probably the only person on Instagram whose every publication on Instagram I like. I love Isamaya Ffrench, too. She’s an art director, dancer, makeup artist. She’s absurdly creative and cool.
Every time that “
In this age of Instagram and so much digital content, what do you see as the new role of brick-and-mortar galleries? How important is professional representation vs. being the “captain of your own ship” in all aspects?
This is an excellent question. It’s one of the key issues right now for all visual artists: Where do you publish your work, and why? Are you going to develop your work thinking that it needs to fit into the Instagram universe, in which case you’re thinking short term? But how short term? Because we don’t know how long it will last. Maybe the next format won’t like Instagram. And maybe the digital-only age is long term in this kind of “cellphone” format, and even if it changes from Instagram to something else the rules will be pretty much the same—meaning it needs to be readable and likeable on a little screen. Moreover, if it’s a little screen we’re moving toward the video age. Would you do what you do to be able to be animated, which is what I do. I do animation because of Instagram… because people want to see stuff animated. And since I do photos that tell stories, it’s not that difficult to animate it. But do I sell? No. It’s very difficult. There are streaming services which are experimenting in selling music animation content super cheap, have launched supercheap digital. But they’re not selling, so that’s a tricky thing. Will it be saleable in the long term? I’m selling through art galleries; that’s where money comes in. Do I use Instagram as a means to promote myself or as a means to create content that in the future will be saleable? Can it exist without galleries and other kinds of corporations? Without galleries, there is no way I can make money. So, it’s super important. And it’s not only my relationship with galleries. This is kind of a triangular relationship, which is weird. Galleries’ agents – where the real relationship,
real money, real sales comes in – is losing its weight as per promotion, as per my existence in the mind of people. Then we have Instagram, which is clearly a dictatorship. So, this is everything for everyone; my site is nothing for people. On my site a picture can be viewed in large format. It’s very beautiful. But whereas per day I might have 4,000 views on Instagram, I will have one or two on my site. So, you cannot compare the two. And then there’s me, the third element in this triangle. I’m trying to figure out – like the agents and galleries, Instagram and, I guess, Facebook – how we coexist together and how this will evolve. The streaming video and streaming music industries give you some ideas, but they’re just ideas. Maybe that’s not where we’re going. It’s still extremely important to be related, represented, and exist in galleries privately for financial reasons. And, you can have an Instagram account with over 300,000 followers but it doesn’t give you the credibility which Red Dot and Art Basel and some galleries give – not only for yourself but for the industries. So sometimes you need to be published by very good magazines and be represented by a good gallery and have a good Instagram account for somebody to say okay, this girl or this guy is serious: not only do I like what they do, but I know that others find it good and also credible. I never know when and why and how what I do gets where it gets or doesn’t. This could pretty much be a subject for a whole conference.
Was there a defining moment that made you want to pursue artistry as a career versus your past professional pursuits? I wasn’t being “me” in front of Excel tables or organizing events that are related to creation whereas I wanted to do it, or when I was doing theater I wasn’t feeling complete because I wasn’t in control enough through the acting and the theatrical set design. At that time, I didn’t know about Bob Wilson, for example, who found the way in a theater to create his own universe. At that time, I was working with the assumption that theater is naturalistic— and the set, too—and so I got out of it because it didn’t give me this sense that I was doing something that I felt is my own world. Actor profession and art, these are things that I don’t understand. I know that these are like stickers that everybody uses on Instagram and stuff, and I think that it’s so used that it’s abused. It becomes like bullshit. Those people that I regard as fantastic creators… they don’t define themselves as artists.
Because we’ve been talking about your lifelong urge for creativity, can you paint a picture of what your workspace looks like when you have all your images and you’re finalizing everything? Are you more hyper-organized or more free flowing? It’s a mix of two. I just go out and grab an ice cream and talk a few hours with someone and then once I go home, everything is all over the place. I sit down and become a robot for hours; I’m focusing on every pixel of every photo to get it perfect. There’s no rule, and every time that I to, for example, get up early and have a perfect routine, it didn’t go well. Every time that I was in sync with myself, I made work that is from me—a projection of my vision, my lifestyle, my hormones. And my process worked. Any time I tried to force something on me it becomes shit, so I don’t do it anymore. I need to accept my own limits, so sometimes when you want to force yourself to do something that you want to do, it’s because you don’t find what you do in certain aspects to be good enough. I have to accept that unfortunately I cannot always get as good or as different from myself as I want, and sometimes it takes fine and sometimes it never happens.
www.polkurucz.com | www.instagram.com/polkurucz
