Emese Benczúr :
Deep in Things

Project no longer on view

Although Emese Benczúr studied painting in Budapest, her tool of choice is the needle, not the brush. She sews and embroiders texts onto canvasses, dishtowels and clothing labels. Time is just as important a component of her work as is language. In embroidery sessions lasting weeks, for example, a textile strip hundreds of meters long with the words "Day by Day" was created, then put on rolls to form documents of a procedural and conceptual method. For the Lower Austrian Garden Show, Emese Benczúr ventured out into the third dimension: a mosquito net is stretched out over a framework measuring 10 x 7 x 2 meters. A small entrance affords visitors access to the inside of an airy sculpture, and a labyrinth of nets stretched out parallel to one other leads into a garden room which is simultaneously open and closed. Here the overlapping of the nets produces the legible phrase "deep in things"—a playful tautology which can be understood on various levels. Benczúr plays out these sensuous aspects of language along the chain of clearings on the riparian forest island, hiding and revealing them in a metaphorically loaded place which just might be the "locus amoenus" of this otherwise rather sober garden show. ,Benczúr’s garden house functions as a link between the poetry of the space and the readable image. Visitors are invited to enter this place psychologically, but also to take part in thought processes regarding art and its genesis. For despite the meditative aura radiated by the pavilion, the critical statement of an artist who does classic women’s work in order to fuel gender debates, rings out loud and clear.
(Brigitte Huck)