Light Seance

Exhibition of Tamás Szvet

Opening at 7pm on 20th of March.
Opening speech by Endre Lehel Paksi, Art Historian The special, interactive light installations in the Mélycsarnok give us fascinating insights into Hungarian light art in the past ninety years. The exhibited reflections are installed on mirror surfaces in the dark exhibition space, which the viewers can project on the walls with the help of torches. The works are placed in chronological order, so the further in the viewer goes, the earlier works of light-art she or he will find.

Made specifically for the space of the Mélycsarnok, Tamás Szvet’s immaterial works (light, digital or virtual) cannot be seen or perceived without a technical device, and would remain invisible without the torches. The works do not exist in the physical sense. The exhibition is a (thought) experiment that seeks to transpose artistic research into practice by actively involving the viewer. In these works which depend on the recipient’s activity, the viewer is recast as a researcher, creator and discoverer, and the works are projected in the exhibition space by means of light controlled by the viewer. Documenting is especially important in this instance; however, photography and video are, for the most part, unable to capture the environment of the work, its intellectual, physical and spatial aspects – its aura. Hard to preserve and hard to perceive, the “aura” is in the focus of Tamás Szvet’s research. How can the aura of a technology-based work be preserved and conveyed? By conjuring up the creations of artists past and present, the artist’s choice focuses on a perhaps less visible trend in Hungarian art, which resides in the mutually inspirational borderland of art and science.

Tamás Szvet (Gyula, 1982) obtained a degree in sculpture at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (MKE) in 2007 as a student of György Jovánovics. In 2009 he began an artistic research course at the Doctoral School of MKE, which he continued in the Research Institute of the University of Amsterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. His works – artistic and scholarly – deal with experiencing, rediscovering and reinterpreting different phenomena. The relationship between science and art, and technology and art assume a crucial role in his installations. His works highlight the relation of art and space, as well as interactivity with the viewer. Extensive art-historical, scholarly and scientific research goes into the creation of his works.