Róbert Šwierkiewicz : Infinite Fish

Vi­su­al ar­tist, a se­mi­nal fi­gu­re of the Hun­ga­ri­an neo-avant-garde. He gra­du­a­ted from the Se­con­dary Scho­ol of Art in Pécs, and then en­rol­led in the Hun­ga­ri­an Aca­demy of Art and De­sign in Bu­da­pest, where his ma­s­ter was Fe­renc Lan­tos. Du­ring his ca­re­er, he wor­ked in many art forms: paint­ing, gra­phic art, col­lage, pho­to­gra­phy, ins­tal­la­ti­on and va­ri­o­us per­for­mance art and ac­ti­on events. His oeuvre can­not be di­vi­ded into dis­tinct pe­ri­ods, as he pur­su­ed his ar­tis­tic ac­ti­vi­ti­es using the va­ri­o­us twen­ti­eth-cent­ury art trends with comp­le­te fre­e­dom and au­to­nomy from the very start. His paint­ings and ob­jects mostly bear the cha­rac­te­r­is­tic fea­tu­res of arte po­ve­ra, Ab­st­ract Exp­r­es­si­on­ism, Pop Art and Flu­xus. Bet­ween 1980 and 1984, he ran the Mini Gal­lery in Új­pest, Bu­da­pest. In 1981, he jo­ined the In­ter­na­ti­o­nal Mail Art Mo­ve­ment, which he re­ma­ined a mem­ber of th­ro­ug­ho­ut his life. In 1982, to­get­her with Jenő Lévay and Imre Regős he co-fo­un­ded the XER­TOX group, which was ac­tive until 1995. His in­te­rest turned to Asian cul­tu­re (li­te­ra­tu­re, music, fine arts and phi­lo­sophy) from the early 1990s, and he first had the op­por­tunity to tra­vel to India in 1993, which ins­pi­red a new as­pect of his vi­su­a­lity, lend­ing a more comp­re­hen­sive and in­di­vi­du­ally sync­re­tic app­ro­ach to his work.

In a brief over­view like this one, it is im­pos­sib­le to dis­cuss all the ex­pe­ri­ments, tech­ni­ques, art forms and gen­res in Šwi­er­kiewicz’s art. Bes­ides or du­ring the cre­a­tive rites and ac­tions and the per­for­man­ces ac­com­pa­ny­ing his ex­hi­bit­ions, a mul­ti­tu­de of re­pro­du­ced gra­phics, chalk dra­wings, paint­ings, small sculp­tu­res, ob­jects, ins­tal­la­tions and pho­to­gra­phs came into being. He vir­tu­ally used everyth­ing for his art: noble and less noble, na­tu­ral and ar­ti­fi­ci­al as well as du­rab­le and pe­ris­hab­le ma­te­ri­als and even fi­nis­hed ob­jects and in­dust­ri­al pro­ducts turned into works of art in his hands. A part of his oeuvre is the­re­fo­re dif­fi­cult to coll­ect, store and con­ser­ve. In fact, he did not care about sel­l­ing his art, nor their ca­no­ni­sa­ti­on. For him, the con­cept and the pro­cess and ex­pe­ri­en­ce of re­al­ising it were on a par with the ob­jec­ti­fi­ed art­work.

cura­tor: Zol­tán Rocken­ba­u­er