KATALIN KOTVICS

wall sculptures click image for enlargement and details



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Addressing Light Katalin Kotvics' mixed media constructions consider light as a manifestation of energy, as an indicator of radiance within. Born in Hungary, but having lived in New York for many years, the artist works with translucent spaces, in which mysterious objects seem to come to the fore in the same way as a deeply buried idea might slowly but surely make its way to the surface of one's awareness. Kotvics, who studied psychology before becoming an artist, sees her mysterious art as evidence of a transformed self; the self-contained quality of her sculpture not only works to reflect light from its source toward the viewer, it also addresses the nature of light itself, its ability to define and set free. The paradigm she describes is primarily that of an interior structure --as Kotvics points out, most of one's time in New York is spent indoors, inside small, dark rooms or outdoors surrounded by tall buildings witch limits one's vision, so that one rarely sees direct light. In a way, the artist's use of translucent white latex to cover her boxes acts as a metaphor for the ability to see, to understand. We experience things obscurely in Kotvics's art, where darkness exists to underscore the dichotomy between shadow and its opposite, light. Presence and absence are very much a part of her vision; the viewer intimates a physical reality that is both filled with form and cosmically enigmatic. Often in her art one has the sense that focusing on an object can imprison its meaning rather than set it free as and example of turbulence within order. Presence returns the gift of light to the audience, whose existence and experience are intimated by the inexplicable depth and refraction within the piece itself. As Kotvics' viewers struggle to make sense of the shadowy intimations facing them, they strive to transcend the commonness of dualities and affirm the existence of that which attaches to light, namely, a wordless content. As happens with the light and space artists James Turell and Robert Irwin, whose work Kotvics admires, transcendence is both the means and the end. Sometimes the objects lying beneath the latex have been arranged in grids, sometimes they are randomly placed. The space they occupy lies between sculpture and painting; in No.11, mylar hemispheres, arranged in six rows of six, catch the light and bounce it back toward the viewer with the aid of a psychedelic sheet, which refracts and colors the light. The regularity of the spheres' placement enhances the ineffable quality of the light returning to the viewer, and as with many of Kotvics's objects, the harder one tires to make rational sense of the piece, the harder it becomes to perceive. The objects, suspended in space, remain inexplicable but real--a conundrum whose final rationale is a sense of grandeur that turns upon itself. In No. 14(Dust to Dust), it is possible to make out a series of aligned dots in the center of the piece; they appear to hover in midair, flanked on either side by an orange-brown atmospheric haze. The dots feel like points of reference for a journey into mystery; perhaps they represent bits of tangible reality in an unknowable matrix. No. 17(Ninefold Odyssey) is a vertical work, in which Kotvics has placed nine breast implants in a row, their rounded curves concave at the top and gradually turning convex as they descend. The title refers to the nine chakras, or energy sources, corresponding to the points in the body. Here Kotvics' cosmic sense of proportions comes quite literally to light; the organic curves of the breast implants suggest a mothering influence as well. If it is true that light can be seen as the expression of pure content, then it makes sense to interpret this and other works by Kotvics as experiments in detailing a theme's meaning. The specifics are rendered visionary by the totality of the construction. Light becomes source and subject, effect and cause. Kotvics knows this well, for her art expresses wordless yearning with deep feeling and a chthonic sense of form. Jonathan Goodman Jonathan Goodman is a writer and an editor specializing in modern and contemporary art and is currently teaching at Pratt Institute. ...back to top