Máté Bartha considers photography both as his core instrument to create the visual of a mysterious all-time City and as a device to scan for stealthy connections and clandestine principles of organization lurking therewithin. In the Anima Mundi series, he musters images of real and staged scenery taken in different parts of the world and collages them together into an unidentifiable Metropolis or virtual location into which he then embarks on a quest to find the order of things and the regularities of contingency.
Various grid structures that merge into the fabric of the city as metaphors of organization and structure; and posters, typical form of communication proper to public spaces are his recurring motifs. But the rasters and posters in the photos offer no help regarding orientation or navigation – no one can possibly know what they express, what logic they follow, or where they lead.
Being focused on the nature and operation of scrutiny and sense-giving, Anima Mundi is an ever-changing, infinitely-expandable project, and consequently, in every case, is presented in an experimental form. This time, for the version exhibited in the TOBE Gallery, Máté collaborated with his brother, musician Márk Bartha, composer of applied and autonomous electronic pieces. Márk’s contribution completes the assembled urban landscape with city sound samples: a musical composition based on them can be heard in the gallery space.
Emese Mucsi / Translated by Zsuzsanna Bodóné Hofecker