Péter Türk: multiple appearances

2021.03.02 – 2021.03.26.

Vision plays an emphasized role in Péter Türk’s oeuvre. From the 1970s onwards, he became interested the psychology of vision and started researching the optical and psychological connections of imaging modes. He developed special imaging techniques, intertwining analytical, abstract-logical thinking based on scientific cognition and empirical experimentation depending on visual perception. Around 1974, Türk began working primarily with photographs, and in the following decade photography became dominant in his work. Vintage Galéria’s current exhibition presents a selection of his works created during this period.

Péter Türk’s oeuvre is characterised by thinking in terms of structures and series. His process of creation typically took place step by step on the basis of pre-planned operations. At the same time, when creating his works in a conceptual manner, he also integrated the emotional and psychic process of creation into his methods. The changes that took place according to the rules defined by Türk led to the formation of patterns. The elements and forms of these patterns could be rearranged and modified by the subjective perception, sensation and interpretation arising from the experience of the process. In the 1970s, Türk observed the fact, that we always look at a particular image differently, and the more times we see it, the more we are likely to attribute different meanings to it.

Since 1983, Türk has been developing new types of images called psychograms and phenomena. To make the psychograms, he placed a perforated sheet of cardboard between the photographic paper and the negative. He traced the movement of his eyes by moving the perforated paper, creating images with the light transmitted through this mask. Previously he also experimented with drawings to track the movement of his eyes. In case of these works, his starting point was an imagined square, on which he marked the positions of his gaze jumping back and forth with pencil strokes ([Untitled], second half of 1970s). He also developed the image type called phenomena using the psychogram-technique, when he projected the psychograms of several negatives on the same paper (Phenomena. From the Psychograms of the Same Five Negatives [1–4], 1983‒1986).

At first, Türk realized these works on a smaller scale, then he got the opportunity to create larger works due to his solo exhibition titled Psychograms, Phenomena, held in 1987 at the Budapest Galéria Józsefvárosi Kiállítóterme [Józsefváros Exhibition Hall of the Budapest Gallery]. The creation of the works was preceded by a long preparation lasting up to months. Türk first collected images and produced negatives of them, referring to this as the “collection of forms”. He also often laid the foundations for the interpretation of his works by writing texts explaining them. “These specks, selected by the mask, are the basic elements of my pictures. They are optical units that are familiar and pleasing to my eyes. They are such minute picture clippings of “reality” that almost nothing can be seen in them. They are richly varied, and they can build any sort of a new totality without any single part surpassing the other. Anything can arise from them.” – stated Türk in the catalogue of his solo exhibition in 1987.

He pointed out that instead of the whole images, only certain details of the original negatives became part of the new works depending on where and for how long the light transmitted by the mask reached the paper. Through the optical, chemical, mechanical processes and the transparency of the negatives, certain details and some indicators of intentionality were disguised, while others got highlighted. The system of forms reduced to darker and lighter specks and the hiatus of forms made the creative forces and the recipient’s perspective visible at the same time. The alternating tendencies and different approaches of twentieth-century art were projected and united in these works, simultaneously thematizing the questions of the reproducibility of optical phenomena and the synchronously sensual and conceptual nature of images. Despite the technical solutions, the works also carry the marks of the hand of the artist, and despite the regulated methods, they reflect subjective and personal decisions.

Türk similarly reduced his tools and established a specific sequence of operations when creating his series titled Something from Phosphene Marks [1–18] (1987). At the end of this period, he developed a new imaging technique by painting phosphene marks on A/3-size coated papers with a slow-drying, translucent glue. Phosphenes are the phenomena of seeing circular-, spiral-, and square-shaped spots of light with closed eyes, about which Türk has read in a contemporary scientific article back then. Following his gaze, he dabbed the then-invisible marks with a ball of cotton wool dipped in brownish-red pigments, evoking hitherto hidden forms. He did not compose when applying the pigments, he just let the appearing marks of the two different structures to collide and unite.