VIDEOGRAM 116

Neither One, Nor Two

The Borsos Lőrincs artist duo’s key area of focus is researching the constructed nature of artist identities. Their question, asked through a range of media, methods and motifs, is how art can become a programmable composite entity. In their case, hybridity – as a concept of multiplicity and iterability – relates critically to the still dominant (neo)romantic tendency in Hungarian cultural thinking. According to the neo-Romantic position, the artist-artwork-oeuvre triad forms an organic unity. Borsos Lőrincs create at once a private mythology and a critique of mythology in general. They fabricate a face for themselves, and by so doing reveal the emptiness of the face’s „place.” The artworks, installations and events they create are the prosthetic media of the Borsos Lőrinc (anti)mythology. Despite appearances, from this praxis, no such thing as a hermetically sealed aesthetic space can emerge. Instead, the ambiguity of the dividing lines between religious-political-social contexts are heightened, as well as the porosity of the private and public spheres, along with the autonomy of art. Borsos Lőrinc as a collaborative phenomenon pulsates between the One and the Many, unrecordably, like the black enamel paint maniacally used and abused by the pair. Black enamel is at once a colour and a material, a symbolic expression and an occlusion. This blackness appears at times breaks into certain classics (William Blake, Lucas Cranach, etc), filling up and exploiting existent art codes. Other times, the ectoplasm like the blackness of Borsos Lőrinc exploits its materiality, generating phantom objects. The destruction of figuration takes us into the bustling night of sheer formlessness. Not a total abstraction, mind you, for here there is always given a dynamic zone or band (the promise, or trace, of a visage), which saves this spectral vitality from freezing into the inorganically rigid blankness of death. Borsos Lőrinc are neither one, nor two, neither husband nor wife, neither art nor anti-art. Rather, this name denotes the place where all of these movements and convulsions converge. We cannot know how many are inside the seething cauldron. They are legion.

(text by Mário Nemes Z.)

30.11.2022, 19:00, online

LORINC BORSOS

Identity

Lilla Lőrinc and János Borsos work together since 2008 as Lőrinc Borsos. The name covers an entity with its creative consciousness. His/her age is currently 13 years. His/her gender, sexual orientation and intellect are equally characterized by bipolarity. The basis of his/her existence is the coexistence of extremities, but his/her actual goal is the solution of duality. He/she is vitalized by the transition. His/her spiritual nutriment is a paradox, the intersections of contradictory ideologies. The typical case of a fall between two stools but the choice of floor is self-imposed. The artist aims at the glimpse of the greater whole: instead of choosing a part, he/she is excited about the relation of the parts to the whole.

He/she despises hierarchy and the social divide and exclusion created in its wake. He/she sets his own existence/nonexistence against these. Part of his/her art is direct questioning of the medium and social reflection. A dialogue with the material, dialogue with the medium. Works that are place- and situation-specific. He/she reflects on the current and delves into longer projects at the same time. For him/her, art gets interesting beyond morals, when it still exists in an unfiltered state, right after the moment of the birth of an idea. At this point, there is no political correctness of self-censorship yet.

Representation

His/her colour of choice is glossy black, and his/her material of choice is industrial enamel paint, which reflects his/her personality appropriately. His/her enamel-black flag of self-representation is not waving in the wind, as it is fastened to the pole with zip ties. If necessary, he/she is willing to take the role of a veterinary horse, a martyr, or a scapegoat, to save the hide of the creators behind him/her.

In the beginning, he/she was building an alternative national image, as a counterpoint to the official national representation. Then, he/she changed the focus to research the nature of the investigated phenomena in global tendencies. This change was triggered thanks to a surfeit of current politics and a midlife crisis experienced being just a few years old. As an answer to this crisis, he/she turned criticism on him/herself and dived into a complex, three-year-long self-analytical nightmare with the help of therapists, a painter and a curator (‘Self Critical Portrait’).

According to the solution by the therapist, him/herself is just a replacement for a child, an idol. Idols are silent, but the artist is outraged. His/her self is inseparable from the artists bringing him/her to life, he/she represents and catalyses their creative unity.

Blaek

Glossy black enamel paint or its other name Blaek is the main identification element for Lőrinc Borsos, which appears in his/her work right from the start of his/her career. The expression is of an Old English origin, which was used to denote glossy, „good” black, as opposed to a matte, „bad black” called „Swart”. High gloss black industrial enamel paint has opposing qualities: it absorbs and reflects light at the same time. Which quality prevails over the other depends only on the viewer’s position. According to the intentions of the artist, the medium created by the paint – despite its profanity – can open up mystical dimensions, punching a symbolic wormhole between times and topics, and opposing contents. It covers and depersonalizes; it separates, or eventually, it connects. Material is hard to control, which envisages a potential for experimentality inside it.

The artist seeks the peace of mind of those who don’t stand a chance.

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