ZSOLT BERSZÁN: REMAINS OF THE REMAINS: Bázis Contemporary Cluj

BAZIS contemporary
April 20 -May 24, 2021
@CENTRUL DE INTERES
Fabricii de Chibrituri 9, 4th floor, Cluj-Napoca

 

ZSOLT BERSZÁN
Curator: Diana Dochia

 

Georges Bataille wrote that there "is no better way to know death than to link it with some licentious image" .

 

"Remains of the Remains" signed by Zsolt Berszán, is an exhibition about dead bodies, corps, decaying remains. Rebecca Schneider argues that the remains are materialized acts that offer the experience of "the missed encounter-the reverberations of the overlooked, the missed, the repressed, the seemingly forgotten" . These remnants facilitate "cross-temporality", the intersection, the connection, the overlap of the past and the present.

 

The new series of drawings, small and large-sized, signed by Zsolt Berszán, created in the time frame of 2020-2021, addresses the subject of death in terms of the remains of decaying bodies. The surface of the paper or canvas is treated as a battlefield, where the graphite completely blackens the support, indicating the idea of earth, mud, muck, and through which bodies or pieces of crushed, abandoned and decomposing bodies could be glimpsed. The artist suggests the body, hardly perceptible in the economy of drawing, as a macabre game of twists, writhing, arches and torn fragments. It is a material representation of the remains of an absent body.

 

Zsolt Berszán is not interested in the individual himself, but in the human remains that become subjects in themselves. The representation of the fragments, the truncated bodies, of the remains, draw traces interpreted in this context, not solely as organic materials, but also as material forms testifying the a priori existence of those people. This new line of drawings, could also be, perceived as a personal archive of images to contextualize the dissolution of the human body. As well the layout in the small-sized drawings and their seriality evokes the researches in Forensic Institutes laboratories. These vital remnants arise from the relationship of appearance and disappearance; they are a kind of phantom traces of evidence of a past existence, which could also be, interpreted as the beginning of a new process. The body as an environment of memory makes it possible to experience time in a loop by relating the overlap and interaction of multiple temporalities, past experiences and, meanings imbued with new ones.

 

The exhibition "Remains of the Remains" is an x-ray of the bodily atrocities that extreme situations, historical and social-political events have had on humanity.