Balázs Kicsiny "The Checkered Doubt"
Rooster Gallery
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In “The Checkered Doubt,” Balázs Kicsiny’s (b.1958, Hungary) paintings, photos and videos on display at Rooster Gallery have a common motif: their black and white checkered pattern, which originates from an English 16th Century sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey, London. This tomb, instead of representing the deceased in a figurative way, is nothing more than an abstract stone coffin.
Kicsiny has created fictional narratives on this absence of representation. In his tragicomic story, the characters are victims of a strange epidemic of identity disorder called Checkered Doubt. These protagonists are reincarnated into different alter egos: a Decorator who suffers a fatal accident, a Parachutist who’s body lies lifeless, and a Prisoner locked in a checkered car, which is unable to move.
The artist’s work crosses Time and Space, between 16th Century England and 20th Century Hungary. It is a chain of arbitrary interpretation, where coincidence is significant: a few hundred meters from Westminster Abbey can be found the Grosvenor Estate with its checkered universe built in the 1930s. Also part of this paradoxical narrative are: the fact that former communist leader János Kádár had a passion for playing chess; and Gabriel Orozco’s checkered skull, which in Kicsiny’s artistic association relates to Kadar’s skull stolen from his tomb in 2006. The recent identity crisis of Hungarian political life is also juxtaposed with Louis Vuitton’s fashion collection for the year 2013, in which a checkered pattern dominates.
“The Checkered Doubt” is also related to Kicsiny’s installations created between 2008 and 2012. Among them is the multimedia installation The Killing Time, which can be seen at Volta Show 2013 in New York. The work was exhibited for the first time in 2012 at the Kemper Art Museum of Washington University in Saint Louis through the generous support of the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist program.
“Kicsiny radically enacts a ‘frozen performance’ - as his work is often described - during which one can only pause and submit to its cues. It’s a massive game board poised for war, dinner or broadcast - where pawns forever mourn their manipulation by an off-camera arbiter.“
- Jessica Baran, Art in America, May 2012
Media
Schedule
from March 06, 2013 to March 17, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-03-06 from 18:00 to 20:00