Standing Figure II
Contemporary Collection
Artist | |
---|---|
Date | 1991 |
Object type | installation |
Medium, technique | coal, wood, paper |
Dimensions | Teddy: 49 × 201 × 56 cm, |
Inventory number | MM99.49 |
Collection | Contemporary Collection |
On view | Hungarian National Gallery Building D, Third Floor, Shifts – 20th Century art after 1945 |
The central motif in Balázs Kicsiny’s art is home, namely the conflicts that arise from not having a home. He develops a kind of private mythology, whose defining feature is childhood: a mining family from the countryside, French new wave films seen in his adolescent years and French PIF comics of which the main characters were Teddy, Bob, and Jacques.
The main element of the work on display here, the three ships folded from paper refer primarily to wanderlust, or the journey to the other world, which the artist expands upon to include the ship as a symbol of the church, a meaning drawn from Christian cultural circles. The sacred symbol is desecrated by pages from a PIF comic book stuck to the side of the ship.
Recurring elements of Balázs Kicsiny’s art are coal, the black and white contrasting pair and the path–journey–search motifs. In this early work, the duality between the fictional world of a comic book and the difficult reality of mining and its past comes forth in an exciting dynamic.
This record is subject to revision due to ongoing research.