The Edible Self

18. September 2012. – 28. October
MegnyitóOpening: September 17, 2012, 5:30 pm
MegnyitjaRemarks by: Bán Zsófia
People in the photo. Portraits. Bodies. The painterly effect of studio stills. Serious faces or smiles looking into the camera: boys, girls, fathers, mothers, a young couple, family, class, community. The best clothes, a fine hair-do, motionlessness. Releasing the shutter. Light and shade brought onto paper. The image becomes an object: in albums, rooms, wallets, medallions, books or on gallery walls. The heroic age. Pattern in black-and-white, then colour. A great and weighty tradition. The era and the occasion recorded are tangible in the pictures. People, places, events. Pictures record, document and represent. Today we turn the pages of an album, step closer to the picture hanging on the wall and visit exhibitions to discover new perspectives.

The memory machine clicks in the mind. Familiar and unfamiliar faces: in a frame, in an album, on the wall and in our heads. An endless archive. Reality and faithfulness to reality. Remembering the past, preserving it for the present, a festive mood. Movement and motionlessness. Perfect harmony. Then change: catching the moment is increasingly replacing meticulous arrangement. The paper, however, remains. Sharper, finer, more colourful and cheaper – but still an object. The digital revolution: broadening and finer frame lines, new visual experiences, depths and definition.

Changing tools and genres. A single, well captured moment no longer has a distinguished status. Shorter time between pictures – a denser story. More refuse. Selection acquires a critical function. More pictures – more ideas. The relationship between image and object is changed by faithfulness to reality. New media emerge: flags, mugs, caps, T-shirts, mousepads and tattoos. Screen. Touch. The favourites on the desk. The limits of the archive become more flexible. Contemporary culture brings together the unmatching. Anything is possible. Let’s eat photos! Shall we eat photos? Let’s bake our beloved one in bread… … a magic object that has been touched by them. His or her image. A magical-ritual connection. Superstition? Magic? Religion? The Communion host condenses meaning and the body without an image.

The image is a taboo here. The body is free. Take and eat. A small and empty picture, but saturated with meaning. A symbol that lives in ritual. That is where it becomes visible. Evokes the memory. Becomes a celebration. Dissolves when placed on the tongue. Water and flour. They melt together – the body, the image, the feast, the host, eating. But what happens if the ritual disappears, yet the image appears on the host? Instead of photo paper, a wafer as thick as cardboard paper with a neutral taste. Depicted on it: boys, girls, fathers, mothers, a young couple, family, class, community.

Potato-starch, water, vegetable oil, artificial additives. Releasing the shutter. Ink-jet printing. Edible picture, edible me. A simultaneous painterly and photographic effect: me, the child, the parent, the grandmother. The medium: the cake. The place of production: a confectionery or the kitchen at home. Simply done, in the manner of a housewife. No witchcraft, no magic, no ritual. Although it is a holiday – birthday, school-leaving ceremony or wedding – featuring a cake decorated with a portrait or a tableau. The favourites on the desk. The archive is decreasing. This is us. A previously unknown world of image consumption. My body.

Zsófi a Frazon