ARTIST PROFILE

Rebeka Sára Szigethy

  • Hungary (b. 1983 in Budapest)
  • Currently in Folkestone, United Kingdom.

CONTACT & LINKS

Eclipse I

Eclipse I

  • 2019
  • Photogram, edition of 1
  • 12.4 x 11 cm
  • Processes as objects experiment - gif - thumbnail Eclipse III - thumbnail Eclipse II - thumbnail Eclipse I - thumbnail

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    Eclipse experiments | 2019

My printmaking practice explores the “objectness”[1] of stones, pebbles, and cobbles. Informed by Heiddegerian Object Oriented Ontology, my work expands how we define objects. It presents them as things with histories, “irreducible in both directions: an object is more than its pieces and less than its effects.”[2] In the series Souls and Eclipse I complicate and question the boundaries of objects. Using photograms, a photographic process that results in a loss of visual information, the objects in my series are presented in unusual ways that work to defamiliarize viewers and invite them to focus on the unknown or overlooked qualities and aspects of the object. In the series Souls (figs. 1–5), I display stones in a way that reinforces their “objectness” by hinting at an inner depth – the photogram technique seemingly removes their surface, which gives viewers the illusion of looking inside them. The visual uncertainties caused by tonal differences question the objects’ material qualities and boundaries. In the Eclipse series, I visualize how an event can also be seen as an object through employing “flat” imaging techniques. Again, using the photogram technique, which allows me to render a four-dimensional event into a two-dimensional image, I am able to hint at the eidetic properties of objects. Such events cannot be directly recorded in Souls, but the shapes in both series are still similar, highlighting that the holes, surfaces and connections we see are not mere topography – they are the marks of events in the objects’ (hi)stories. [1] I deliberately avoid using the term “objecthood” as that would allude to Michael Fried’s concept of the same name. In Art and Objecthood, Fried uses the term “object” in a restrictive way, which is not compatible with OOO. [2] Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (London & New York: Pelican Books, 2017), 53. Emphasis in original. The above visual essay has been published in Sequitur, Volume 5, Issue 2 (Spring 2019).