Ádám Kokesch: The art of information

His character as an artist is like that of a modern scientist. Although he finished his studies in 1993, his works truly reflect the 21st century. Information and the lack of information are both essential parts of his art, while the responsibility of taking part in the process of understanding is fully up to the viewer.Graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, he started off as a member of the group called Klub-Vh. The company of young artists created works specified for public locations as cinemas, markets, etc. referring to these places in a critical and creative manner.Later he took part in the the Young Artists’ Studio Association, both as an organizer and as exhibitor. The Association, run by progressive young Hungarian artists, provided many activities in Budapest and exchange programs with the international art scene.
Just to mention his last display, Ádám Kokesch shows us some of his playful and clever installations at the exhibition about modernism and its afterlife nowadays. The exhibition titled: Try again. Fail again. Fail better was recently opened at the Mû­csarnok.
The exhibited installations have a strong but a positive critical tone. The project consists of three parts: an icon-like image mounted on glass, hung on a wall, an odd red flower-like object built of metal and plastic that grows out of the worn grey floor of the exhibition hall, and a model of an imaginary building which resembles mostly an early modernist venue. Playgrounds of ideas – that is how Kokesch shows us modernity.

Kokesch’s first widely noted coming out was when he won the Strabag Prize, the most respected Hungarian award for painters, in 2006. Many of the visitors had been searching for the canvases of the winner but they weren’t easy to find, for the artist makes small object-like paintings with a technique called “hinterglass” – paints on the backside of the glass.
And what comes out of Ádám’s laboratory like workshop communicates in the language similar to that of a computer. His art points toward the future: a geometric, minimalist style is what he applies filled with symbols.
Secret is brought to us as well, by code; decoded messages seem to be hidden behind the signs he uses in his artwork. His sculpture-like objects, whose functions are not so easy to define, were shaped by the norms of industrial design.
Everything comes to hand – everything seems to be useful, what’s more, human- centric – but on the other hand they create a very strange space-like environment in which we feel ourselves quite lost.
At his exhibition, Sudo Kino, which took place at the Dorottya Gallery (2008) the visitor arrived in a forest of “radiators” – objects that seem to transmit something to us – it was up to us to decode it, or decide whether we consider development a thing that brought us closer to understanding.

 

 

Ádám Kokesch:
Born: 1973
Graduated: Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, 1993

Recent exhibitions:
2008: Sudo Kino, Dorottya Gallery, Budapest
2004: Possession, W139, Amsterdam
2003: Possession, Stúdió Gallery, Bp.

 

 

 

Pictured: The explorer

Photo by Ádám kokesch