Zsófia Keresztes at Elijah Wheat Showroom / New York

Artist: Zsófia Keresztes
Glossy
Inviolability

February 29-April 12, 2020 
Venue: Elijah Wheat Showroom, New
York, US


Photography: Philip
Hinge/ Dávid Biró
We ride a wave of compassion, yet is it all a pretense,
merely the facade of empathy? How do we prove that we actually care? Keresztes’
work challenges the viewer to go beyond the enjoyment of the aesthetic to a
frank interrogation of the challenging symbolism within the beautiful
structures.
Here are works which nod towards the idea of an abandoned
spider web, of teardrops joined in a “network”. The tears, Keresztes has
suggested, represent social media and its predatory claims on our sadness – and
the sadness of others. Using a pastel palette of tiles, Keresztes’ formidable
technique creates a mosaic which becomes an actual web of tears, linked to the
habits we form of searching to assuage our feelings of self-pity, our
projections, our need for others to notice and see us.
The central figure in the gallery greets us as “a robust
woman figure in a waiting position, gleaning the acquired attention,” Keresztes
says. This woman “sacrifices herself on a bed of nails, her body decaying into
pieces. Then, she incorporates them together again joining into the
circulation.” The pixelated body folds into itself, encompassing the figure’s
virtual and actual being. Her mission is to feed off the grief of others, while
her pretense is that of inviolability. Her sham empathy, its unbearable weight,
is represented by the form of a superficial teardrop which smashes down on her
limbs.
Empathy is a magic word, a feeling everyone apparently wants
to own. Like a wizardly still life, it purports to provide the key to the other’s
personal pain and grief. But how genuine – or how phony – are the tears that
drop from a shared loss on social media? It’s hard to negotiate through the web
of ironically disconnected connectedness. Flocks of sentiment flow into the
comment section; all valuable, yet only some solidified by the follow-up and
the reality of human presence.
-Carolina Wheat