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FROM THIS SIDE: A PHOTOGRAPH, FROM THAT SIDE: A SCULPTURE
19.09-01.10.2023
Foton Galéria, Budapest
The exhibition unfolds a modeling problem with many ramifications, where the formula can only end with the word “patience”. Krisztina Bóka’s works balance the precarious, blurred border between sculpture and photography. The photographic negatives disappear, as they are replaced by the hidden interior space and reflective exterior surface of the original object itself. Her process uses both the technique of the pinhole camera (the ancestor of photography) and the photogram, a genre familiar to avant-garde art of the 1920s, on light-sensitive paper. To reveal the closed anatomical apparatus, the artist chose a fundamental theorem in mathematics. Equal in edges, dihedrals, and dihedral angles, She transforms the five existing spatial regular solids – the tetrahedron, the hexahedron (also known as the cube), the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron – into a self-reflecting ‘dark chamber’, so that the original object and the copy made of it are identical. The examination through this contemplative process reflects itself as an ouroboros, a snake biting its own tail, in order to reject the contemporary habit of viewing images at the TikTok spin level.
The exhibition was opened by Péter Szabó Pettendi
Curators: Annamária Szabó & Bíborka Emese Szakács
Photos: Tamás Domonkos Németh, Krisztina Bóka
STRESS RELIEF, 2022
photogram, RC photo-paper
120 pcs, 115 x 190 cm
I popped each bubble one by one on an 11x15 cm bubble wrap. A photogram was taken at each popping. I want to contrast the momentary joy of action with analog image-making, which is significantly prolonged in time.
AIRPLANES, 2020
photogram, RC photo-paper
100 x 90 cm
I made airplanes out of light-sensitive papers and I shine a light on them from different angles. After that, I flattened out the origami and then I developed the pictures. The result is a pseudo artwork which is based on the airplanes’ shapes.
VISUAL SCOPES, 2023
RC photo-paper, iron, magnet
dodecahedron 94 x 45 x 21 cm, icosahedron 113 x 52 x 10 cm, hexahedron 90 x 120 x 18 cm, octahedron 88 x 58 x 29 cm, tetrahedron 64 x 57 x 9 cm
My diploma work explores the relationship between space and form. Drawing on the noble forms and timeless geometries of Platonic solids, I explore the complex themes of outside and inside, space and form, the real object, and its photograph. I am curious to explore the almost always present inner, hidden space enclosed by hollow sculptures, and I am also intrigued by the effect of the pinhole camera, the process of physical transformation of the body, its transformation, and the enrichment of form.
Using light-sensitive photo paper, I made a pinhole camera of each Platonic solid.
I folded the paper into shapes in the darkroom so that the photosensitive side was inside the body. I placed the resulting body in a white, translucent box with one side a mirror. I turned the side with the camera hole towards the mirror and then exposed it. I then developed the paper folded back into the plane, with an image of the body’s exterior appearing on the inner light-sensitive side. I repeated the same process with all the shapes. The original object and the image of it are thus one and the same.
In the end, the camera I programmed results in a unique, unconventional photographic aesthetic. The images extended from spatial geometry to planar geometry generate a variety of relations: by opening up the closed apparatus, we gain insight into the anatomy of the camera, while at the same time, we learn about the hidden interior and exterior spaces. In fact, with the physical transformation of the body, the reproduction of the human eye, the modeling of perception, has taken place, and the seeing body knows itself.
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