Manfred Wagner/András Kapitány

Manfred Wagner

András Kapitány

The artist was born in 1964 in Romania and his master was Dóra Maurer, who had helped him to grow to be himself. This is important because by this fact we not only claim that a teacher-student relationship consists of the passing of the knowledge from the senior to the junior, but also of the symbiotic discussion of possibilities and the concept of artistic practice.
According to this, András Kapitány considers his task in raising questions, to which he attempts to give an answer by artistic solutions. The method – if it merely gives an answer – is uninteresting for him. It is superfluous to ask whether his works are concrete, abstract, figurative or non-figurative, because this subject is a remarkable syndrome of the obsolete, old-fashioned artistic concept.
Kapitány is not concerned with the materialistic side of art, he rather elaborates proper working methods, which may refer to a surface that has to be created, as well as the self-defining radiation of the colours, to object trouvé-s, which might be applied to even whole buildings – for instance the building of a college.
Kapitány produces camera obscura-s of dark internal spaces and keyholes, replaces members of famous table societies (Duchamp & Co.) with computers in order to create virtual conversations, builds up street galleries of virtual pictures or produces CD-Roms for the repetition of certain artistic events.
The project, which he presents in different fragments at Collegium Budapest, is connected to the constructural mechanisms of M.C. Escher (1898-1972). Kapitány does not only examine the statics of the peculiar drawings of the mysterious crystallographist and mathematician mentioned above, but also inspects the operation of their three-dimensional effect. Moreover, he makes the investigation the starting point of further working process.
Ultimately, - as it can be seen in his series entitled “The Parasite”, made in 1995 – Kapitány is interested in the “genes of architecture”, the finding of those expressive powers, which produce the construction. This procedure is not only analytic but deconstructive as well. In the history of recent architecture deconstruction is not equal to destruction. According to Frank O`Gehry or to the members of the group called Coop Himmelblau, it is the ranging along of those conscious and unconscious design elements, which can be expressed plastically. This procedure is carried to extremes in the works of Kapitány, till the computer is till able to react, until it reaches the limits of its possibilities.
The phases of certain steps – the final result of the work – appear in laser prints in preferential size or they can be taken off from the Internet. It is remarkable that – contrary to expectations – graphic quality comes into being that satisfies all traditional demands. What does this prove?
Does it show that man is unable to develop this kind of disorder? (Wilhelm Fucks)
Or – as Kapitány claims consciously – that a work of an artist always results in an art-work?
Or rather that natural science is right when it claims that the analysis of (perfect) construction, too produces (perfect) applications?
The arguments are present and the experience of cultural heritage historians can neither contradict to it. This way, András Kapitány joins the international group, which examines not merely the ideas that can be experienced by humans, but approaches anew a scientific viewpoint, to which Renaissance was the latest example. The thesis is reinforced by the fact that this is all carried out with the help of the most modern instruments, the handling of which demands great fantasy and knowledge, and whereby the operation of the instruments themselves is also exclusively based on strict logic.
The analysis as a primary scientific method is the base of further procedures that belong to art`s territory. As a result, this method joins and integrates the two different approaches. So the product – or the process leading to it – can neither be separated from the creative factors without losing its point.
The essence of the transformation of science and art mentioned so often in our days, shows itself unreservedly. Not in a way that one would take over the role of the other. Neither in the scientific discoursed about art, (to great complain of professional mediators of art) nor – according to the latest fashion – in the declaration of the so-called parascientific work art. (primarily based on social context)
The everywhere ascertained approach of science and art, (in which the history of western art was never lacking) originates from our modern and rationalistic way of thinking and the devices based on it as well as from the unavoidable psychical power that aspires to solve emerging questions with the help of artistic experience. The work of András Kapitány is a good evidence of it.