Gábor Ősz: Ontology-Tautology – What does the image want?

From June – July 2012, Holland based artist Gábor Ősz has been working in Budapest on the invitation of the Igor Metropol Association. Within the walls of the studio, he created a video work that raises a new aspect to attempts to comprehend the nature of the relation of analogue and digital imagery.
With the completion of this new piece, the artist presented this work together with another project closely linked to it to the public. On this occasion, both the new video installation, “Tautology”, and the preceding video work, “Ontology”, have been screened for the first time in Hungary.

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“The history of the image is directly linked to the history of depiction. But what happens if we disregard the previous statement, and we set a mirror before the image, to confront it with its own existence? The image void of depiction, the empty image – so to say – exists since the appearance of the technical image. It is none other than the sign of light. It is the image projected without the negative by the analogue photo-enlarger that is equivalent to the flickering empty white frame on the screen of the cinema. Before everything begins: the space of information – with the information missing. In the course of the recent “Ontology” project, a looped analogue film is installed on a given track with the aid of various rollers, to project its own image. The filmstrip, set in motion by the projector, realises the concept of the space within the space, the projection of the recorded repetition of the projection becoming the image within the image. One of the differences between the analogue and the digital film loop is that the digital process has no physical evidence. Therefore we cannot film it. The piece “Tautology”, realised in Budapest, is the digital version of the principle of the “Ontology” project. The images of not one, but three digital beamers on three walls of a space appear in the film, as an equation of loaded spatial and visual relations. The projection initiated by the white image of the empty beamers is multiplied by the concurrent repetition of the projections of the sweeping recordings of the space. With the repetition of the process, the projections multiply their own space, like mirrors, and the prescribed motion presents a kind of complex system of the projection of the projection of the projection. The space moves within the space, in the repeatedly recorded recordings of the space of the projection. ” (Gábor Ősz)

The works of Gábor Ősz are represented in Hungary by Vintage Gallery.

Website of Gábor Ősz

The screening of the new video work and installation took place on July 3rd, 2012 together with an artist talk and a book presentation by photographer Péter Puklus at the Igor Metropol Studio. The event was organized in collaboration with Lumen Photography Foundation. (Link to event description)

Some snapshots (!) of the event: