The exhibition of Barnabás Neogrády-Kiss is a profound reinterpretation and refocusing of one of the defining lines of his work: the self-portrait or selfie. Whereas in the past, visual self-analysis took shape in the context of a specific theme, be it capturing the life of a children’s village, studying his own eyesight, his own defect of vision, or articulating the solitude of a residency programme, now the subjects of exploration are his own body and his own face, or rather the way they are captured, photography itself as self-interpretation, self-framing.
The artist is not merely observing and seeking to understand himself in an actual or virtual mirror, but rather studying these very mirrors, or frames, and how these, that is the constantly changing environment, the material and the human world, impact on the self, the body that is ingrained, inseparably woven into the fabric of the world.
However, Neogrády-Kiss does not simply pose and capture himself in front of his own lens, he is not merely a passive and static object, a subject of self-portraiture, but engages in an active and often playful relationship with his environment and camera. Making an image is often an imprint of a smaller performance.
As if the artist was not satisfied with the existing forms, but instead, he is engaging in new experiments by framing and reinterpreting himself and his self-image. His works frequently emerge from their respective frames and enter the realm of other images, constantly interacting, permutating and moving.
Neogrády-Kiss’s sensitive and sensual gesture is simultaneously revealing and reserved, indicating the paradox that even if we expose and make visible everything about ourselves, a thousand faces, bodies in a thousand different surroundings and frameworks, we still cannot express and transmit our inner self, as it is not as easy to localise, to touch as is the body, the flesh. The soul has no frame, or if it has, it is composed of an infinite number of interlocking frames and contexts.