Over the past year, my attention was drawn to a Budapest apartment listing whose photographs revealed a bygone world to me—a world that its presumed new owner would eventually “renovate.”
I wanted to capture this pre-renovation state and depict it in a series of 70 x 100 cm drawings. Thus, inspired by an apartment for sale in Budapest, I depicted, at the very last moment, a silent Budapest on the verge of disappearing, one that is beginning to become an invisible memory. To fade away—to disappear.
These images capture the melancholy of old bourgeois apartments and the light penetrating them, which cuts sharply and geometrically through the still air.
The pure light contrasts with the atmosphere of the past.
The pure light marks a different timeline.
The pure light is the angel of Bethesda himself, stirring up the dusty air.
I am interested in the constancy of space in relation to time, because space is constant yet changes with the passage of time.
Paradoxically, the interior engages in an intense dialogue with the outside world. Doors and windows stand in an endless array; the images are meant to demonstrate this complexity.
Zoltán Ötvös