MARK FRIDVALSZKI
Just like in A Space Odyssey, the UFO dimension in Fridvalszki’s works prise open the collage-compositions constructed from archival image material in the form of space-black abstractions, as a cosmic horizon or line of flight expanding its temporal and spatial framework, or as a fourth dimension bending space-time, which is the source of the spirit of the avantgarde from the beginning, due to Duchamp and Picasso. The collage principle defining these works, the arrangement of textual and visual elements drawn from diverse sources into an integrated presence and sense itself embodies the perspective of a fourth dimension, just as the alien played by David Bowie in the 1976 Man Who Fell to Earth simultaneously watches twelve TVs with various programmes.
Elliptical, circular and spheric motifs, populating the panels of Fridvalszki are likewise UFO metaphors to the extent that the UFO itself is a metaphor, on the one hand for a cultural ideal, of popular modernism that strives to redistribute and turn the avantgarde-modernist experimental sphere into a democratic public culture, and on the other hand, a political ideal, planetarism, continuing to envision a leftist-progressive alternative against capitalist globalism. The textual and visual references in Fridvalszki’s works on view here relate to both of these closely connected ideals, just as the circular and spheric motifs roll from the miniature Ben Day dots of comics to the planetary images of cosmic dimensions, from the book and album covers embodying “popular abstraction”, through the pair of eyes of David Bowman exposed to psychedelic abstraction, all the way to the pair of globes of the Berlin Fernsehturm. Through all of this, Fridvalszki’s artistic trajectory also comes full circle: while Uforia constitutes the next station of his programme of ”future archaeology”, it is also a return to the various aesthetic and contextual elements of his works preceding his current period from 2018, reaching all the way back to his earliest works made some fifteen years ago, consisting circular compositions, cosmic visions, technological alienation and alien technologies.
