ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice is dealing with the doubtfulness of knowledge, particularly the parallelism of alternative views and beliefs in the contemporary context of the post-truth era. Currently, I'm pursuing an artistic research in the Doctoral School of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, where I'm focusing on the role of images and spatiality in the process of knowledge creation and the formation of opposing alternative narratives.

This topic is part of a larger framework, a long term project I started around 2012 and during the years I examined it from several points of view both theoretically and in practice. It was originating from the constructed nature of human thinking and the personal mindsets and worldviews they are embedded in. Later I was focusing on the fallacy of remembrance and visual perception, as well as various cognitive distortions as the foundations of false conclusions that can totally mislead any following interpretation. Recently I started to concentrate on the uncertainty of image-based sources and the representational issues of three-dimensionality, trying to emphasize the importance of spatial property and the defective, arbitrary nature of fixed, perspective views.

Most of my artworks have an abstract characteristic and they incorporate elements from structures like networks or grids, but they all share a strong conceptual or research-based background. My diverse methods are based on both manual and digital techniques, I’m using photography and 3D software to create simulations resulting printworks as well as laser engraving and 3D printing. In other cases, I use manual toolset and juxtapose manufactured and found objects to create mixed media installations in a site-specific manner.

BIOGRAPHY

Áron Kútvölgyi-Szabó (1985, Budapest) graduated in 2013 from the University of Pécs, Faculty of Music and Visual Arts, Sculpture Department, previously he was studying Humanities (Art History and Philosophy) for 4 years and Sculpture for a semester in Engelsholm Højskole, Denmark. Currently, he is enrolled in the Doctoral School of Hungarian University of Fine Arts.

Since then he had 9 solo exhibitions, one in Berlin, Prague, Brno and Žilina, and five in Budapest. He participated in several group exhibitions both in established institutions,  non-profit and commercial galleries in Hungary and abroad, for example at the Ludwig Museum Budapest, Trafó Gallery, Kunsthalle, MODEM (Debrecen), Institute of Contemporary Art (Dunaújváros), m21 (Pécs), Studio Gallery as well as at Glassyard, acb, Deák Erika and Chimera-Project Gallery; at Šopa and Tabačka Gallery (Košice), the Positions Art Fair (Berlin), Viennacontemporary and at the first OFF-Biennale Budapest.

He took part in several residency programs (in Stuttgart, Bern, Berlin and Brno). He was awarded the prestigious Derkovits Gyula Prize between 2015-17, nominated for the Esterházy Art Award twice, and the Leopold Bloom Art Award in 2019. He received the Visegrad Research Scholarship at the Open Society Archives in 2018.