Fero Turcsányi

FERO TURCSÁNYI is an artist, painter, photographer and creator of artistic and documentary films. His work has been exhibited both in Slovakia and abroad, and he is actively involved in the national and internation arts scenes, either as a participant or as an organizer of plein airs and creative symposia. He has been awarded the HANEMU jury prize in Hungary (2007; 2018) and the Contemporary Art Gallery Prize at the Silver Triangle International Painting Triennial in Przemysl, Poland (2018). He is also a member of the C+S art collective.

In his recent work, he has found himself pulled between two poles – the epic and the experimental – but the two forces intersect to generate a remarkable symbiotic energy. The idea of symbiosis has emerged as a key motif which permeates his creative output – interactions between humankind and nature, between technology and emotion, between the visuality and meaning of the image. In his first series of works, Turcsányi reflects on contemporary social tensions and the existential struggle to make our opinions heard. As the artist notes, the scene in his painting VILLAGE APPLAUSE “… is at first difficult to define, a seemingly absurd gathering of people attempting to forge a consensus in an atmosphere of collective consent among the participants”. The work is inspired by a bizarre scene from a period photograph he came across in a local newspaper. Similarly, the painting NEON MORNING “captures the atmosphere of an early morning encounter between two men who have been up all night. It expresses a fleeting moment of intimacy between two characters, share their thoughts in mutual consolation, expressing their feelings of guilt, seemingly caught in a symbiotic dependency”. The work might be referring to an iconic scene from Wim Wender’s film Wings of Desire. Turcsányi’s artistic expression is characterized by the precision with which he captures mood and his ability to invoke powerful emotional responses. His compositions are never soulless – each of his works conveys a specific narrative within its subtext, a distillation of its essence, ever aware of the charm and absurdity of their situations. BREAKDOWN (SYMBIOSIS) is one such example of this, constructed around an appropriated image of “a child feeding birds”; into this bucolic scene of innocence and harmony, the artist imposes scenes from the many conflicts currently being waged around the world, as if referencing the prophesy of Isaiah that “the wolf shall also dwell with the lamb” (11: 6-9) – a (possibly sarcastic) vision of the tranquillity of the new Golden Age. The curatorial concept of the exhibition contrasts this work with the video titled GARDEN ROLLER which depicts the erratic, AI-guided path of a lawnmower which serves as a metaphor for the dangers posed by drones. In the painting SEARCH FOR A STAR: MY TEDDY and its accompanying video, the artist observes natural processes by means of its confrontation with the world of artificial intelligence. In his everyday tasks around the garden, tending to the trees and grass, observing the local wildlife, he comes across a lawnmower – an autonomous, semi-domesticated entity with a roving eye. He is fascinated by its movements, its seamless integration into his daily habits, its constant capacity to distract him from his work. It enables us to perceive time differently (MY TEDDY). Turcsányi depicts the seemingly serenity of life in the garden by showing us the garden lawn; yet when he examines the grass with an infrared lamp, a secret microworld beneath the surface is revealed. But the lawnmower goes on regardless, undeterred, moving to the rhythm of music in a summer holiday atmosphere, immersed in a living symbiosis with its surroundings.

Fero Turcsányi is searching intuitively for an equilibrium between worlds – between humankind and technology, between reality and the imagination. Symbiosis is more than a mere theme; it is the principle which underpins his creative approach. He invites us to enter a space in which the visual is a reflection of the inner world, and where the peregrinations of a robot lawnmower can evoke an uneasy sense of connection.

Edita Vološčuková, project curator