Géza SZÖLLŐSI

“My Kitin series revive my miserable childhood when I couldn’t get hold of expensive, western toy figures, so I was forced to make them myself with my modest tools. This habit is still very much alive in the Third World, although – ironically – nowadays these toys are being manufactured there. Since the raw material of this project is nothing more than Thai beetles and insects, I settled into the mental anguish of a Thai boy: because I can’t get the popular transformer toy figures, I walk out into the garden (jungle) and patch up something seemingly similar. The joke is that – in this performance – the result has the aesthetic qualities and appearance of its pop-cultural patterns. However, the manufacturing and the very es- sence of these pop-cultural patterns – business, consumerism, marketing, kitsch, Hollywood… – are in stark contrast to the essence of the tiny statues, such as: nature, craftsman- ship, unlimited fantasy, creation and respect…”

Unfolding in the duality of the passing away and preservation of the body, simultaneously mimetic and science-fictional artefacts are born from self-representative materials, which can thus be placed on the boundary between art and life. Science, fantasy, pop culture and sexuality are mixed in a sometimes bizarre spectacle. It was as if we had entered the workshop of a crazy taxidermist, a playful teenager, or a meat fetishist who models living creatures instead of trains. In the works, the flesh is indeed flesh, the fur is fur, and the chitin is indeed chitin. All this fills the viewer, who imperceptibly becomes a voyeur, with curiosity mixed with some uneasiness. – János Schneller