techboyz: Introduction · Lubos Culen

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD

The Vernon Public Art Gallery is eager to present the works of Brigitta Kocsis a Montreal based artist with a strong exhibition record both nationally and internationally. Born in Hungary, Kocsis pursued her education in the United Kingdom and Canada. This latest exhibition Kocsis focuses on figurative work depicting young adults in everyday situations.

Our guest writer for this publication and overview of this exhibition titled #Techboyz is Dr. Michael Boyce, a Montreal based arts writer. Boyce has an interest in the social production of culture and is recognized as an author of two published novels and various submissions for artist catalogues. Curator Lubos Culen has also provided an introductory essay for this publication.

I’d like to thank the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council and the Regional District of the North Okanagan for their contributions to the operations of the Vernon Public Art Gallery and our programs. These funds are vital to the production of exhibitions such as #Techboyz for the enjoyment of our community.

We hope you enjoy this publication and exhibition.

See you at the VPAG,

Dauna Kennedy Executive Director

#techboyz: INTRODUCTION

Brigitta Kocsis’ work focuses primarily on the portrayal of the human body situated in various environments, which range from descriptive to abstract. In her previous work, her focal point was on the description of predominantly female bodies in various states of nudity. The figures often feature various prosthesis, sometime believable, other times verging on cyborg-looking bodily adornments. Sometimes the figures are incomplete and lack a solidity of form which Kocsis then replaces with diagrammatic lines complementing the missing limbs. The figures are often depicted in groups and with expressions imbued with dystopia. The bizarre groupings and activities are not overt, but the viewers’ associations inevitably apprehend a possible narrative, however unclear. The figures exist in close proximity to each other which suggest that perhaps staying close together results in the feeling of mutual help and security. The portrayal of nude figures inevitably implies the insecurity and the vulnerability of humans.

The environments that the figures occupy might be quite dense and oppressive; in other compositions the environments might be just suggested by the passages of intense colour. Despite the realistic modeling of human forms, Kocsis’ paint delivery is quite expressionistic in orchestration of fluid and dense passages of painted layers. The figures often confront the viewers with a straight-on gaze, which contributes to the feeling of intense drama, alienation and disconnection.

After relocating from Vancouver to Montreal, Kocsis embarked on the artistic journey which resulted in a slight shift in her mode of operation in her studio practice. As she describes, Kocsis wanted to do something different and depart from what had become a familiar manner of working, specifically the intersection of figure and cyborg dynamics in her painting. Her initial years in Montreal were quite intense in her pursuit of different art forms. She started producing abstract paintings, photography and started to write poetry. In 2020, Kocsis was awarded the prestigious Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship and started the residency at the Vermont Studio Centre in Johnson, Vermont. Unfortunately, she had to leave half way into the residency because of the then looming pandemic.

The current exhibition at the Vernon Public Art gallery titled #techboyz shifts slightly from the previous portrayal of the female body to a depiction of exclusively male figures. While Kocsis executes the male body in a loose realistic rendering, she is not striving for Renaissance perfection in modeling the human forms. Her desire is to show that the works are paintings and their appearance is driven by the painting process with the layering of often incomplete passages of paint and gestural mark-making.

During the Covid19 pandemic restrictions in 2020, Kocsis went for repeated walks in her neighborhood dedicated to the observation of different environments and people and acquiring photographs for her source imagery. She would often pass by the software developer Ubisoft Montreal’s building and observed