ARTIST TALK โ LIQUID HORIZONS ๐ f|x|r galรฉria, Veszprรฉm, Vรกr โ Foton udvar ๐ Saturday, July 18 ยท 7 PM
This Saturday I’ll be talking about Liquid Horizons โ the immersive four-wall panoramic installation currently on view at f|x|r galรฉria โ and the process behind it: AI-generated imagery, projection, and the shifting horizon between the real and the synthetic image.
I generated an audio companion โ a scene-by-scene author’s narration on the ideas behind the work. “The machine writes and reads everything now; understanding is still ours.” Listen below ๐ง HU:
The real-time light installation Tessela is currently on view at Perceptual Spaces โ Hommage ร Vasarely by Light, a group exhibition of the Lighthouse Association and guest artists at m21 Gallery in Pรฉcs (2 July โ 23 August 2026), opened during the Zsolnay Light Festival โ in the year of Victor Vasarely’s 120th anniversary, in the city where he was born.
Tessela is a homage to Vasarely’s Vega period: a projected, tessellated field that behaves like a membrane rather than a grid. Five generative scenes are rendered live in WebGL2, and the image is never fixed โ in the gallery an infrared camera senses the viewer’s presence, and the field bends, breathes and deepens in response. The picture only exists together with the person looking at it.
And now you don’t have to travel to Pรฉcs to look: the web version of the installation is live at tessela.ivo3d.com. All five scenes run in your browser โ explore them with your mouse or touch, or enable your webcam and let your movement shape the image, just as it does in the gallery (everything is processed locally, nothing is recorded). Find the hidden menu, and let the field respond to you.
Ivรณ Kovรกcs can sit back and relax. The young video artist from Budapest has the bulk of his work behind him. All he has to do now is make sure that his projections go off without a hitch. He doesn’t like to talk about the hours he invested, but he’s already happy about the praise for his work with various rendering programs. Kristรณf Szabรณ has ushered in a new era with this video art. While in earlier works he urged Kovรกcs to tell a parallel story with the room-filling projections, this time the two have gone all in on associative imagery. And thus achieved an overwhelming effect. For the first time, the audience no longer has to get involved with various events on stage, but can enjoy the reinforcing effect of the video images that underscore the stage action.
In general, director Szabรณ shows himself in his latest work Gaia. Meereslust at the Orangerie Theater in Cologne is more experimental than ever. Gaia – in German Gรคa – is the personified earth in Greek mythology and one of the first deities. If you like, you will find her this evening in the person of one of the two dancers. This is of no importance. Already in the first seconds after the beginning of the performance nobody thinks about the title. In his play between transience and lust for life, Szabรณ lets the two dancers perform so strongly in silence that he immediately captivates the audience. Annika Hofgesang carries Karolina Tรณth onto the stage, singing an incomprehensible song. As Hofgesang lets Tรณth slip from her arms, withered leaves fall to the stage floor. The signs of transience will permeate the next hour.
Hofgesang throws herself into the arms of someone who has so far appeared in whimsical supporting roles and as a stage designer. Today, Boshi Nawa gets to contribute his actual skills. With a lot of diligence, the artist has built up a second mainstay. The bondage rigger master gives workshops and partner seminars to pass on his passion. Artful bondage has long since left its grungy image behind and has evolved into one of many forms of self-discovery and self-realization. Now he’s giving an example of his artistry on stage. Hofgesang is already wearing a black leotard with ropes attached. Boshi Nawa continues the bondage, winding ropes between her legs and ropes around her chest, then pulling the dancer up by them, where she twists under coils. The F.A.C.E. Ensemble, of which Szabรณ is the artistic director, has already announced this in advance. And thus also attracted new audiences. That it essentially remains with the one performance seems a little disappointing at first. But in fact, the one demonstration makes up almost half of the performance. And Szabรณ doesn’t want a pure bondage show; that will follow at a later point, he promises.
In the meantime, Tรณth moves across the stage twitching, obviously hurt over the violation, above which Hofgesang circles in a mixture of lust and despair. After Boshi Nawa artfully unleashes Hofgesang again, Szabรณ dares another advance. The three actors leave the stage. For minutes, the audience is allowed to feast on the images Kovรกcs casts on the side and back walls, on the floor of the stage, creating an image box. Again, images of decay creep in as Kovรกcs shows collapsing or bombed skyscrapers. In the next moment there are scenes of happiness, when Hofgesang and Tรณth approach each other, a touch of eroticism sets in. Finally Tรณth goes hard at the master, throws himself into his arms again and again. With the bondage ring Boshi Nawa wants to catch his next “victim”, but Tรณth is not yet ready for death. She escapes the metaphorical fishing rod and throws herself into life again.
The program of the Portuguese electronic label Crรณnica features music by Davor Mikan and Nicolas Bernier, Heimir Bjรถrgรบlfsson, Pimmon and Helgi Thorsson, The Beautiful Schizophonic, Quartz and the Rolling Stones. There’s a good pounding, but always in keeping with the images on display.
Szabรณ and his team have presented, it can not be said otherwise, a new masterpiece. This may not be obvious at first glance and explains why the audience delivers spartan applause. But the images of this evening burn themselves in. And that is something one does not experience so often.
