ARTIST STATEMENT

Identity

Lilla Lőrinc (1980), and János Borsos (1979) work together since 2008 as Lőrinc  Borsos. The name covers an entity with its own creative consciousness. His/her age is currently 9 years. His/her gender, sexual orientation and intellect are equally characterized by bipolarity. The basis of his/her existence is the coexistence of extremities, but his/her actual goal is the solution of duality. His/her mind is mostly active in a pleasant spring breeze, prying the twilight zones of perception at these times. He/she is vitalized by transition. His/her favourite construction is the bridge, his/her dwelling place is the border crossing point. His/her spiritual nutriment is paradox, the intersections of contradictory worlds. The typical case of fall between two stools but the choice of the floor is self-imposed. The artist aims at the glimpse of the greater whole: instead of choosing a part, he/she is excited about the relation of the parts to the whole.

“If I imagined two kingdoms bordering each other, one of which I knew rather well and the other not at all, and if however much I desired it I were not allowed to enter the unknown kingdom, I would still be able to form some idea of it. I would go to the border of the kingdom known to me and follow it all the way, and in doing so I would by my movements describe the outline of that unknown land and thus have a general idea of it, although I had never set foot in it. And if this were a labor that occupied me very much, if I were unflaggingly scrupulous, it presumably would sometimes happen that as I stood with sadness at the border of my kingdom and gazed longingly into that unknown country that was so near and yet so far, I would be granted an occasional little disclosure.” (Soren Kierkegaard: Either / Or)

He/she despises hierarchy and the social divide and exclusion created in its wake.

He/she sets his own existence/nonexistence against these. He/she thinks in cooperation, whether its about laymen, or art experts. Part of his/her art is direct questioning of the medium and social reflection. A dialogue with material, dialogue with the medium.
Works that are place- and situation-specific. He/she reflects on the current and delves into longer projects at the same time. For him/her, art gets interesting beyond morals, when it still exists in an unfiltered state, right after the moment of the birth of an idea. At this point there is no political correctness of self-censorship yet. This is the realm of the absurd, a source of free manifestation. For him/her, this dimension carries the universal language and message that can fill the space between individual and medium, or between topicality and universality, continually „aeterno modo”.

Representation 

His/her color of choice is glossy black, his/her material of choice is industrial enamel paint, which reflects his personality appropriately. To express his/her liminal social status, he/she uses a fake noble’s coat of arms, and a 12-cylinder Jaguar that is out of order. His/her enamel-black flag of self-representation is not waving in the wind, as it is fastened to the pole with zip ties. 

If necessary, he/she is willing to take the role of a veterinary horse, a martyr, or a scapegoat, to save the hide of the creators behind him/her. 

In the beginning, he/she was building an alternative national image, as a counterpoint to the official national representation. Then, he/she changed the focus to research the nature of the investigated phenomena in global tendencies. This change was triggered thanks to a surfeit of current politics and a midlife crisis experienced being just a few years old. As an answer to this crisis, he/she turned criticism on him/herself, and dived into a complex, three year long self-analytical nightmare with the help of therapists, a painter and a curator ('Self Critical Portrait').

In the time of World War I, James Joyce was asked about how he killed time during the war. He answered, „I wrote Ulysses, And you?” (anecdote) 

According to the solution by the therapist, he/she him/herself is just a replacement for a child, an idol. Idols are silent, but the artist is outraged. His/her self is inseparable from the artists bringing him/her to life, he represents and catalyses their creative unity. He/she stands in an alliance of interest with them, in mutual parasitism. He/she provides an outbreak point for the artists, who, in return, fill him/her up with content. He/she is a special feature who develops a skill for empathy and acceptance. A survival tool that keeps the host bodies flexible. He/she is the artists’ answer in an alienated, tribal world that shows an ever-extreme image and operates with quickly changing rules.

Blaek

Glossy black enamel paint, or its other name „Blaek” is the main identification element for Lőrinc Borsos, that appears in his/her work right from the start of his/her career. 

The expression is of an Old English origin, which was used to denote glossy, „good” black, as opposed to a matte, „bad black” called „Swart”*. High gloss black industrial enamel paint has opposing qualities: it absorbs and reflects light at the same time. Which quality prevails over the other depends only on the viewer’s position. According to the intentions of the artist, the medium created by the paint – despite its profanity – can open up mystical dimensions, punching a symbolic wormhole between times and topics, and opposing contents. It covers and depersonalizes; it separates, or eventually, it connects.

„I believe in that a plastic, a torn plastic basin is just as sacred as the Vesper star, but salvation cannot be guaranteed in advance. Therefore, if in my glance, or in my perception this is not elemental, then you cannot say anything better about that thing, in fact it must be weighed down. I’d even dare to say it must be ducked under water. So to make plastic even more plastic, and in that very moment it will burst out crying, and in that moment it will emit a scream like martyrs do.” (from a 1979 interview with János Pilinszky, reporter: István Szigeti)

Material is hard to control, which envisages a potential for experimentality inside it.

Each of the painted surfaces is individual, and react to the smallest changes of the surrounding. It remains flexible even after its drying/fixing, and it dilates or contracts along temperature changes. As to leaving marks on them, they are unprotected against external effects.

*Michael Pastoureau: Black: The History of a Color (Princeton 2008)