Zsolt Asztalos works in the context of the neo-conceptual art that emerged in Hungary in the 1990s. His choice of themes is combined with a diverse use of media – object, photo, video, installation, interview, text. His video works are dominated by the photographic and still image, and his objects are often accompanied by photographic works of independent value made of objects. Scientific modelling, cognition and its linguistic aspects, the study of artistic and linguistic constructions are at the heart of his creative work of more than twenty years. Her work bears witness to the experience of history and the past that emerges from postmodern thinking and attitudes, emphasising the relativity of historical narrative and confronting the limits of the grasp of individual memory.
In the last ten years or so, his interest has been steadily directed towards cognition, the mental cognition system – this is summarised in the exhibition Fragmented Memory. In his study of both scientific cognition and human memory, Zsolt Asztalos attaches a special role to the function of (visual) representation in cognition. His characteristic method is one of situating, pointing out, less the exploration and precise analysis of historical data, but rather the afterlife of representations, models and constructions (both mental and visual), the exhibition of the elusive human emotions that lurk behind them. The artist does not identify or pronounce, but creates a situation: it is up to the visitor to ‘decipher’ it, filtering through his personal emotions and memories.
The exhibition Fragmented Memory draws attention to cultural and material memory, to trauma discourses. Its starting point is the concept of fragmented memory, borrowed from psychology and translated in the exhibition as fragmented memory, whereby in memory disorder the individual is unable to associate memories with his or her autobiographical (episodic) memory, the emotional and personal content of memories not being connected with the rest of memory. Through objects, photographs and videos, previously exhibited and installed in various ways, the exhibition aims to emphasise the fragmentary nature of memory, the problematic nature of access to the past, and to see the work of the last ten years of the oeuvre as a single complex project.
The exhibition’s tight budget meant that the use of cheap DIY and recycled materials offered new opportunities for the artist and curator.