It is difficult to balance responsible and adult life with actions that we do only for ourselves. The voice in our head is familiar to many of us: if something has no real purpose, is it still worth doing?
Emese Tóthová’s latest series explores the playfulness of adulthood and highlights the importance of the state of being that allows us to play and experiment without stakes, escaping from everyday actions. After all, play is a mental state.
Emese is inventing games where she sets herself small challenges in her personal space. Patience and trust games, playing in pairs or alone. A game with time, a game for its own sake.
A room in Antwerp or an apartment in Paris becomes a playground where childhood freedom mixes with the existential anxieties of adulthood. The images taken with the remote release capture this performative situation.
Games teach us, but they can also be cruel. Besides the fun and intimacy, Emese Tóthová’s images also evoke the world of trial games, where ability must be proven and which are often part of rite of passage. Whether it is a kindergarten playground or a camp for freshmen.
The exhibition invites the viewer into a space that is both playful and contemplative and which evokes the liberating, magical and sometimes ambivalent world of games.