Zsófia Keresztes. In Ethylene Arms

KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased to present Zsófia Keresztes’ solo exhibition IN ETHYLENE ARMS in the Nave of St. Agnes. The exhibition is the artist’s first show with the gallery and marks the beginning of her representation with KÖNIG GALERIE.

Zsófia Keresztes is a leading figure in contemporary Hungarian art, where her sculptural style is characterized by amorphous, anthropomorphic forms, reminiscent of both surrealist flesh and post-human, virtual bodies. Significant for her work in recent years is the use of glass mosaics within her sculptures. Keresztes manages to free the rigid lines and grid inherent in the mosaic structure, subordinating them to her fluid forms, which appear to be in constant flux. In particular, one of the primary motivations for incorporating mosaic into her works was the glossy sheen of the glass, which reminded the artist of the shiny, smooth surface of internal organs. Indeed, her sculptures are almost painfully reminiscent of flesh, organs, and fantastical, brutalized bodies, often bound in a suffocating embrace between tenderness and cannibalism. Although loaded with multiple meanings and references to mythological images and theoretical texts, her works are distinguished by a certain levity and elusiveness.

For IN ETHYLENE ARMS, Keresztes transforms the former nave of St. Agnes into a garden of earthly delights and suffering, where it is somehow both spring and autumn – apples bloom and rot, pain and joy are one and the same. We cannot be sure what is a beginning and what is an end. Which comes first, the apple blossom or the rotting of the fruit? The apple, in its various states of metamorphosis – from blossom to fruit – is the central image in Keresztes' latest work, deftly employing biblical, semantic, and cultural-historical associations with the fruit. Above all, though, the apple becomes a sweetly painful metaphor for femininity, maturity, and motherhood, which are invariably linked to the search for balance between pleasure and pain, self and other.

The sweet smell of rotting apples is something our nose picks up in the first moment, but in the next is repelled by the haunting smell of death. This is the smell of ethylene, a poisonous gas that is released when fruit rots. But more resonant for Keresztes is the fact that this gas is actually "contagious", such that If an apple begins to rot among healthy ones, the ethylene it releases will infect others. It is this notion of sweet-morbid closeness and togetherness that underlies the entire exhibition.



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