Badtext

The acb NA gallery is proud to host the first retrospective solo exhibition of visual artist, performance artist and poet Attila Csernik. His oeuvre is characterised by multimediality, as the spectrum of his works ranges from concrete and visual poetry through artist’s books and objects to performances and actions. At the same time, to this day, his works are centred on letter and text, and their relation to the image and the body. In 1973 he joined the conceptual Bosch+Bosch group, which represented the mindset of the Yugoslav neo-avant-garde and the New Art Practice, and remained its member until its dispersal in 1976.

The body as a medium has a special role in Csernik’s oeuvre, since from the early seventies, his works have often featured writing on the body in various forms. He has organised these works into a number of different groups, the most emblematic of which is the Badtext series. Among the pieces currently exhibited from this series, there are pieces of sequential art that can be associated with process art (Telex), wherein he puts his own face in the centre like a portrait; another group of works employs text projections.

Throughout the process of Telex, Csernik applied letters onto his body with the help of an aid, but at first glance, no sensible expression can be deciphered from them. Telex was an international system developed for the exchange of text messages, and this reference had a special meaning in the countries of the Soviet Bloc: Csernik’s work may at once refer to the communicational difficulties of the socialist era and the resulting loopholes, as well as the reactions of art to this situation. In relation to this problem, the practice of “reading between the lines” or the suspension of meaning by creating chaotic conditions are also among its allusions.