Kovács Kira - Spraywall - Rechnitzer Gallery

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Spraywall

16 October – 15 November 2024

"What should a text be about (or rather, what should it not be about) that is intended to offer an external point of view to images whose very purpose is to discredit the necessity, credibility, or even the possibility of narrative linearity? How can an interpretative intention, cobbled together from impressions, provide a handhold if the handholds follow an arc which, when reached for, forces not only little used but also unknown muscle groups to be set in motion, or even created, by crackling and crunching, on the one hand, making it impossible to take up familiar gestures and poses, and on the other hand, pointing to the reserves of performative possibilities, conscious functions, associations of images and memories that are not otherwise known, but which are beyond the everyday function. There is no greater danger for the consciousness, which seems to be on an ever-widening trajectory in the horizons of the Internet, than the answer that comes with the question, to confuse the rational with the true, to lump interpretation with impression, association with inference, the self with the ready-made, envy with desire, and to settle down in the comfort of everything, allowing the imagination to colonise unnoticed.
Kira Kovács has placed a cucumber in her paintings in the manner of Crivelli, but her secret is precisely that there is no secret, or rather that everything is: that the entry points, the narrative starting field, the referential frame is unique, unrepeatable for each re-entrant. Finding the handholds of different colours, shapes and touches, the individual paths that follow an invisible logic and connections, is not only due to the dispersed nature of the painterly language, the indissoluble dialogue of elements, the referential diversity of the object culture, but also to the exceptional sense that is able to make the aesthetics of presence in absence, of silences and misunderstandings, sound like a totality. Not only does the spray wall allow, or even force, us to challenge our individual myths within a single image that can be seen as closed, but we are often forced to grope upwards, sideways, and often backwards, moving from image to image, while the thud of bodies thrashing on faux leather mats, losing their grip, rings in our ears. Which, along with the certainty of failure, holds the promise of the need for (self-)redemption."

Rita Orsolya Maczák

The first solo exhibition of Kira Kovács (1998) at the Rechnitzer Gallery is a selection of her most recent works and paintings made during her university years.

The narrative nature of her paintings is revealed in her practice through an exploration of the relationship between fairy tales and visual art. His visual world is shaped by personal and fictional stories, but Kovács does not focus on his own, but rather on the deeply personal and subjective nature of the experience of the recipient. His aim is to encourage viewers to freely form their own perspectives and interpretations within the framework of the artworks. By basing her works on 'real' events and forms of connection, she engages in a performative yet distancing gesture that creates open possibilities for interpretation. In doing so, he ultimately seeks to make his paintings not just a visual experience, but a dialogue between work and recipient - or perhaps more importantly, recipient and recipient.

Kovács sees both the creative and the receptive aspects of his paintings as constantly changing, and he invites the viewer to look at his paintings as an endless narrative. Such malleability in the stories of the works reflects the changing nature of human interactions and perspectives, offering the possibility of interconnecting different perspectives. Her works thus also provide insight into the value of examining her work from other disciplines, such as sociology, philosophy and other cultural studies, in order to gain a deeper understanding and exploration of her subject matter.

Kira Kovács graduated from the Painting Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2024, in the class of Eszter Radák.