Imre Kocsis (1937-1991), a graphic, painter and installation artist of Hungarian origin who became known in Germany, is considered one of the key figures of international minimalist-constructivist art. He worked in graphics, painting and later in space installations. In the 1960s and 1980s he was a pioneer because of his concept and interpretation of space based on the colour pair white and black. Following long preparations, Molnár Ani Gallery has undertaken to present the first Hungarian exhibition of Kocsis, a well-known artist abroad, and thus to present works never seen in Hungary before. For the curatorial and research project, the gallery has asked Flóra Mészáros to explore Kocsis’ international work.
Kocsis moved to Germany after the 1956 revolution, and two years later he became a student at the Hamburg Academy of Art. Kocsis had become an important artist of geometric art in Germany during his (first he lived in Munich, then in Düsseldorf, and later in Frankfurt). Kocsis exhibited in France, Sweden, he worked in well-acknowledged studios of New York and of Amsterdam. By the 1980s, he was one of the most invited artist of the groups shows organized by constructive-concrete movements.
First, he created dadaist objects, following that, from the mid-1960s, in his drawings, he was preoccupied with use of systems and structures that emphasised the contrast between black and white. At the end of that decade, he found his own voice and continued to explore the two colours: he was interested in the spatial effect of geometric planes without perspective and the visual order that could be created from them, varying according to rhythms (similarly to the concept of Karl Heinz-Adler). Moreover, he did not exclude the role of ’chance/unexpected’ from the creative process.
In the early 1970s, he consistently used the formal dominance of black and white in his graphics and paintings to represent the pragmatic content of the colours. Later, the two colours also became the basis for his objects. According to his Ars poetics: “My relation with the two colours I use is not metaphysical, but pragmatic; they are subordinate to my formal declaration. I see black as inseparably coupled with white. Black pictures are a displacement of white from the surface; that is, white is virtually reduced to zero. The converse process is equally conceivable. White displaces black.” In the constructivist concept of Kazimir Malevich, as the first artistic example of the reaction on black and white from the 20th century modern art, the mentioned two colours came to play an autonomous role as the basis of his formal philosophy. Whereas for the concrete artists in the 1930s (Art Concret) or 1970s, the two colours reflected the role of colour in itself, they were considered an indispensable part of the so-called “inner reality created by their art”.
In the op art experiments of the time, the two colours were a tool of conscious vision, and the contrasts they created helped to further enhance the spatiality of the space. For Kocsis, the conceptual understanding of the colour pair made sense. Kocsis interpreted black and white as separate entities and as negative versions of each other. This is the origin of the title of the exhibition, “Double Negative”, since the double negatives, like the English “negative” formula, do not result in an elimination but in an affirmation. In other words, Kocsis sees black and white as separate versions of each other reduced to zero, but together they are already emphasized in a positive interaction, mutually reinforcing.
From the 1970s onwards, Kocsis applied this colour concept not only to his graphics and paintings, but also to his installations, which altered the traditional perception of space. His objects (painted fibreboard), fixed to the wall or laid on the ground, can only be viewed in conjunction with the white wall and the surroundings, which was Kocsis’ intention. The medium, like the background of the paintings, adapts to the slits and space nodes as a pictorial space. The multi-dimensionality of the objects induces the viewer to move in a variety of ways, almost as the composition of paintings and graphics come to life.
At the same time, the objects’ surroundings are given a new context. Furthermore, the thickness of the installation’s slits varies in the viewer’s eye through the change of perspective. In addition, Kocsis did not avoid the traditional pictorial effect: looking at the installation from the front, one is confronted with a geometric work in relief, which appears to be an imprint of Kocsis’ enlarged graphic works. What does it mean to receive an artwork? What is an artpiece? What is space itself? Does the viewer or the object define the artwork? − Kocsis operated with such conceptual questioning.
This turn towards minimalist spatial installations in Kocsis’ oeuvre dates back to the early 1970s, when he moved his to Düsseldorf, the centre of the German minimalists. Düsseldorf was a centre of minimalist projects in public spaces by the 1960s, and its local art academy had been teaching the new trend in sculpture and painting. The work of Imi Knoebel and Blinky Palermo in the city are underlining examples. Kocsis brought the world of concrete art (the meaning of concrete creation) into the concept of minimalism which as típical minimalist works were reduced to two colours and built on space-forms.
While his formal approach was different from German minimalist ideas, it was related to examples of American minimalism that parallel his own in time, such as Dan Flavin’s and Judy Chicago’ reimagination of the white cube space, such as Chicago’s Rainbow Prickett being a particularly exciting analogy. Kocsis has also paid homage to the avant-garde tradition by taking forward the compositional interpretations of the Russian Constructivists and Suprematists, and in particular Vladimir Tatlin’s understanding of the relationship to the recipient.
Kocsis’ basic premise is that space and the art object are not evident, not permanent, but, like our world, constantly changing, shaped by the viewpoint of the recipient. Our exhibition represents this interpretation of space with works never seen before in Hungary, focusing on the artist’s entire oeuvre: spatial installations, paintings and graphics.