Each bomb has its own story. Which is essentially one of two kinds. Bombs may explode and thus fulfill their role as objects made specifically for the purpose of destruction, and then enter history books and the personal histories that families maintain.
Zsolt Asztalos in his turn looks into another possible story in the installation he has created for the 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice: the story of the malfunctioning device which stays with us, generating, interpreting and symbolizing conflicts among humans. In what semantic fields can these destructive objects, these relics of wars waged and raging, these latent carriers of a constant threat, be interpreted, asks Asztalos. His “found objects” are multiple representations of conflict situations, open to simultaneous interpretations on personal, local, regional and global levels.
An unexploded bomb makes a statement. It thinks. Motionless. Mathematically. The process frozen by chance devours time. They are manifestations of a state of grace. The machine that was created to destroy man left its original function, and went on (may go on) to write the history of hu•manity on its own, creating personal myths and narratives which may make the inexplicable, if not interpretable, at least relatable. It is with its own disorders that technicized society creates an opportunity for mystery to work—while denying its very existence. Their fault or “unnatural” behaviour extends the temporal dimensions of the conflicts, even reveal them as timeless.
The theoretical approaches, as well as the research and installation praxes of the visual arts have been instrumental in processing the brutal traumas of the late 20th and 21th centuries. It shows that bloody genocides occur in the name and shadow of false slogans about humanism. They were dropped but did not explode. What has become of them? How did they determine the future, our future? These are the questions that Asztalos’s installation makes us ponder on, rigorously, in all their ramifications.
Artist:
Zsolt Asztalos
