Koronczi Endre -- Andrási Gábor: Festõ, gép

Painter Machine

Gábor Andrási

When I first saw his works, Koronczi was still painting "beings" (his term); canvasses standing on small legs, constructed from several pieces, as if the irregular anamorphose of a vast distorting mir-ror had been projected onto them; "glances" without significant antropomorphic tendencies, yet evoking Malevich’s late figure-concept and, especially, Yavlenski’s Head-series.

In the next step Koronczi broke up the large surfaces of his canvass-montages he had used until then. The individual components took an elongated rectangular form; the works showed a more light, airy, constructive structure moving dynamically outwards from a single centre: a centre cre-ated by the constricting force of the joints pointing inwards; and the space segment enclosed by the right angles of the painting-arms opened onto infinity along the enframing planes. Latterly he painted these works white, to rid them, once and for all, from the personal imprints, brushwork, and gestures they bore, the traditional signs and proofs of the authenticity of the creation of form, as well as the "aids" called for when evaluating a painter’s work: he thus destroyed the original form, and by "rehabilitating" the purity of the empty, primed canvass he demoted his cycle to an object.

In spite of all appearances, it was not Koronczi’s faith in painting that shook but, rather, his faith in the myth of the picture-creating genius. But what could replace personality? And can personality be entirely excluded from the process of creation?

I shall attempt to reconstruct Koronczi’s answers: 1. Personality may be replaced by a method, a mechanical picture-processing method, a technique. 2. True, despite this, personality will be inevi-tably present in a work, yet it can be constrained, and a tight rein kept on it.

"Translated" into works: Koronczi has been working (for years now) on a series of copperplates cre-ated by covering the surface of the plates (entirely or in part) according to a pre-determined logical system, and by systematically shifting the position of the plates (Koronczi: Catalogue introduction, 1991). Nevertheless, the method inducing an infinite number of varieties resulted a series of indi-vidual works, causing a slight problem in evaluating them: are the individual pieces to be consid-ered the work or, according to formal similarities, is it certain cycles, or perhaps the entire series? (Personally, I would opt for the last one, despite the fact that because we are talking about over six hundred etchings the work is, so to speak, impossible to exhibit. And I cannot help bringing Tibor Eisenmayer to mind, the artist’s black and white photographic series of 1987-88, comprising over a one thousand pictures which were also created by the enlargement and reduction of a few motifs, their shifting from positive to negative (and back) and mounting, all of which resulted, as I then wrote, in "an unstoppable form-creating torrent".)

Based on the principle of the copperplate series, in 1992 Koronczi developed his new technology for painting, termed by Ernõ Tolvaly a (painting-) machine, the results of which, the machine-created "copies" were called "self-painting pictures" by Balázs Faa (Balázs Faa: Self-painting pictures, Új Mûvészet, 1993/3; Ernõ Tolvaly: Turned pictures, Nappali Ház, 1993/2.) To make things clear I shall quote the excellent writing of Balázs Faa (Tolvaly, too, quoted him, and I am quoting Faa now. It all brought the stones of Óbuda to mind - which originally came from a Roman fortress, they re-appeared in a gothic buttress, and later in the vaults of a baroque cellar; also, Koronczi’s works in question are shown among those very stones in this publication): "The painter has placed two can-vasses face to face, inserting paint among the two, then moving the canvasses independently from one another. It was this motion that spread the paint onto the canvasses pressed together. The result was the unification of the two in a single painting which never saw a paintbrush. [...] The painter is an entire system, a picture-producing machine which, once certain parameters have been defined, serves then only as an animator, slipping unnoticed out of the process of creation."

I think I understand Koronczi: he is disgusted by the irresponsibility of "subjective self-indulgence" wrapped in post-modern theories, and he wishes to figure himself, his work and creation alike in a simple, clear situation.

Pictures then, with Koronczi’s method, are undoubtedly "painted" (in the passive, without a sub-ject), and are created unseen by the artist. It is questionable, however, whether the mechanism of the "picture-creating machine" is indeed merely a technique. The technique of "getting painted" in the given or, rather, chosen artistic context, is none other than a concept. To shift the order of words: this unique technique is Koronczi’s "concept". Which is where I return to the problem of the "entirely unavoidable personality". One must bear in mind that, on the one hand, we are talking about a painting-machine incapable of producing even two identical works of art and, on the other hand, that the quantity of the materials used in the process of "getting painted", the colours, the choice and dose of various tones will render the final results predictable - as far as the main fea-tures are concerned, at least. (Jovánovics, too, works along similar lines; and because he casts his plaster reliefs "from behind", neither does he see his work in the process, although he does have some idea of the final result all along. (Not to mention the fact that when moving the canvasses the most frequent movement, rotation, will inevitably spread the paint in circles or slices of circles. Thus, at the end of the day, the fundamental elements of painting, colours and forms, behave at all times according to the "programmed" intentions of the painter, creating, over and over again, un-mistakably Koronczian paintings.

The reason why I am saying this is because, I would like to demystify overestimated personal quali-ties and thus impersonality (the painting-machine, getting painted, the self-painting picture) like Koronczi does with "subjective self-indulgence". For what we see, despite his technical conceptu-alism or conceptual technique, is painting even if the squares constituting his pictures move away from one another, from the exhibition room to the street, as the fragments of a partly-imagined movement which now and then touches reality. Even though Koronczi has put down his brush and fragmented his surfaces, he still paints paintings: he is compelled by fate to paint until indifferent space, creeping among them, has entirely devoured the elements of the canvass-mosaic thrust towards emptiness.