Jozsef Csato
“Humour plays an incredibly important role in my life and thus spills over into my work, sometimes through titles or through laughable figures or forms.”
Interview by Sonja Teszler
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
I was born in Mezőkövesd, a lovely town in the Hungarian countryside. I’ve always been interested in drawing and went through stages that eventually led me to attend the Hungarian University for Fine Art as a student in Dora Mauer’s class. Dora is the best pedagogue I could’ve possibly had the chance to work with. She can communicate with everyone on the same level of demand and yet through individual channels. In her teaching she placed a particular focus on perfecting our ability to communicate about our works, which has served me a great deal ever since.
We still have a close relationship today; she is very attentive and nurturing of her past pupils’ careers and I’m very proud to call her my teacher and guide.
Your work moves between abstraction and figuration, hosting a myriad of different familiar references from anthropomorphic figures, mythological elements, everyday objects to art historical symbols. Could you talk about some of them and how you go about your research and ‘making’ process?
A certain formal vocabulary, or a ‘club of forms’ rather, has definitely consolidated in my practice throughout the years. This can basically change every day, but there are some permanent or at least ‘episode’ characters such as plants and vegetation, smoke and vapor, drops, hands, vases, cartoonish eyes, cacti, bones, instrument-like objects etc.
Through this phase, the most important thing for me is making a large volume of drawings. Each of them opens up a new door, which I can decide to step through.
The interesting thing about the ‘research’ process is that it essentially consists of sorting through all these drawings and deciding which ones can find their way to becoming a part of a painting and which ones will remain drawings. I always end up choosing the weirder pieces as characters in the paintings, ones I might not have chosen upon a first glance.
There aren’t any conditions for the sources of all the forms and figures, indeed they come from a lot of places including mythology, cinema, furniture design to my kids’ drawings - everything that goes through my brain and leaves a unique imprint. The finished work is a mix of all these references along with some happy accidents.
ENA viewingspace ‘Not Enough Buckets to Hold the Tears of Joy’
Watch, 2020
Sleeping with Screens, 2019
You have a very consistent, overarching visual language and with titles such as “Lava stories” or “Sketchbook mythologies”, there is a reinforced sense of the works following a narrative. Could you describe the kind of coherent universe presented in your works and this relationship to storytelling in general?
The mentioned titles started from my website offering me the opportunity to create various groupings for pictures even if they are from completely different periods. I believe this desire comes from me realizing that despite me believing the paintings are following a linear path, truth is they much rather zigzag through timelines both in theme and style. I often catch one work being a continuation of a painting from 7 years ago, or rather its acceptance, its legitimization.
My relationship to storytelling is somewhat odd – I never have concrete stories in mind for the paintings and never thought I ought to. On the other hand, I love listening to other people’s stories about them, who come to the studio. Many people easily go off on rich tangents describing what they see, how it’s about them specifically and the narrative happening to them in the work. It’s amazing!
So there aren’t any stories per se, instead, I’m trying to brew something that can give birth to stories, raise a few possible starting points for myself and the viewer in the shape of familiar forms and figures. I’'s interesting how once they’ve embarked on that journey, they aren’t in the least disturbed by nonfamiliar forms but instead move around confidently inside the world they’ve created in our minds.
How do your approaches to storytelling vary from painting to installation and sculptural work, from a flat and in a sense more limited medium to a three dimensional, theatrical one?
It started with the collages. I’ve made collages from found things and paper and the surface sometimes became so drastic that two dimensions simply weren’t enough to carry it. I’ve also often felt I wanted to insert things from other angles into the image. When making collages I was working with very thick materials that always had leftovers I didn’t throw away and that eventually grew into a kind of mountain in my studio. I cut this ‘mountain’ in half – without planning on displaying it – and eventually, it fit my exhibition Selfminerals Under My Shoe with Art Quarter Budapest very nicely. It was a great illustration of the creative process. I consider my three-dimensional works as extended forms to my paintings with shapes that could easily be part of flat works. Sometimes I feel they’re somehow still life objects for past or future paintings.
It also happens that the title of painting inspires me to make an installation to complement the paintings themselves within an exhibition. The best thing about it is the forms and figures bounce back and forth between dimensions as they inspire each other.
Unexpected Process, 2019
ENA viewingspace ‘Not Enough Buckets to Hold the Tears of Joy’
ENA viewingspace ‘Not Enough Buckets to Hold the Tears of Joy’
Almost There, 2019
Your installations and sculptural arrangements often resemble totemic or ritualistic settings. Could you elaborate on this aspect of your practice and its relationship to the paintings?
Whether it’s pagan customs or our simple everyday rituals, they have always been one of the preferred favorite subjects. We could call any unusual habit a ritual. Their mixture always contributes something exciting to my paintings that I can continue to add to, such as in the work Afternoon Berry Ritual.
The creative process itself has its unique rituals that I’ve been interested in- stretching the canvas, the initial few basic movements as I’m starting a new painting. I’ve been more self-aware these days, observing the things I think are ‘working’ in painting and watching out for movements not to become routine. Often, it’s hard to differentiate between something one can ‘do well’ and something done out of routine. I find searching for that boundary a very exciting territory.
I think we are acquiring more and more of these everyday routines; they’re becoming integral parts of our lives, gestures like frequent hand washing, putting on a mask or not touching our faces.
Does humour play a role in your work, and if so, what kind? Using elements of pastiche or mixing different iconographies can often come with a sense of irony, but your work doesn’t necessarily strike me as ironic – even though there’s definitely some punchlines in there.
Humour plays an incredibly important role in my life and thus spills over into my work, sometimes through titles or through laughable figures or forms. But I try to keep my distance from irony, I think it’s an extremely dangerous and irrevocable tool. With silly figures, I prefer to use more of a wide-eyed naivité or faux-naivité, but never in its cynical form, I don’t think it can be mixed up. I’ve witnessed a scene in the studio once when a married couple got into an argument about whether the painting before them was funny or scary. Of course, they wanted the answer from the artist himself, but I could only say – I have no idea! Because paintings aren’t mystical objects or codes to be deciphered but surfaces that anyone can approach confidently with 0 information. Using their retina is enough.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
The curious situation in the world right now has somewhat overwritten my calendar (much like everyone else’s). All events are postponed or cancelled. Artists in their studios are broadly perceived to be in a kind of quarantine already, and so work doesn’t stop, moreover it’s taking new turns enriched by these strange experiences. I think this can be a good time to create, even if it seems harder every day to focus my brain on thinking actively. And then who knows? Maybe it will eventually lead to a more instinctual state. It’s definitely already changing ways I view the art of the world. I started making reliefs about a month ago which take more time- so I’ll have time for those as well as to see how the paintings develop in response to events happening around us.
All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 29/04/20
