Interview with Károly Keserü on the occasion of his exhibition Tiger at Patrick Heide CA

Tiger is your first solo show entirely dedicated to your works on paper, which mainly consists of drawings and collages.
What different types of drawings are there?
Can the drawings and collages be divided in different bodies of work?

There are watercolours, drawings, collages, but there are also works with paper which do not have any other type of medium than paper itself: the folded, crumpled, punctured and punched works do not have any ink or any other kind of medium on it, they are just paper themselves.
My works on paper are more playful and more experimental than my paintings, so, in a way, they are quite different but also quite coherent. There are lots of similarities: the major elements like repetition and minimal imagery persist, but they (the drawings) are more instant, easier and more unpredictable, more intuitive and improvised.
I do not categorize them, for me they are simply all works on paper.

How important are the early collages made from stationary?

The stationary collages, which I call ‘Stationary Constructivism’ because of their relation to Modernist Constructivism, are also not different from other works on paper. To me, they are collages the same way as the non-stationary ones, and they are very often combined with ink drawings, scribblings and graphite works.
I started them in mid 90s, when around 1995/96 I started to work on paper.
I really liked to collect fun materials, like items from stationary shops; not art papers, but rather wrapping papers, or any other kind of paper materials from all sort of places, and I tried to combine them in an interesting way. When I found all these coloured dots in a stationary shop and they were available in many colours, and as I really love the dot form, I just thought they were great things to use.
So I bought all sorts of colours and started to put them together with audiotapes from music cassettes and also videotapes to make lines.
I found ways of drawing not using traditional materials like ink, gouache, watercolour. Since I started to make art, every time I create something I get inspiration from my previous works.

How do the process and the result differ in the different techniques?

There are lots of different processes as different materials require different techniques: some of them are just stuck on paper, some of them need glue, some of them are attached with staples or labels.
Obviously, when someone draws with graphite, ink or watercolour, these need to be applied with a pencil or a brush, but these (Stationary Constructivism) works are completely different, I did not use any traditional type of art tools.

What is the source of the imagery, the pictorial language and the patterns?

One of the major sources is the turn of the Twentieth Century Modernist Style. I admire most of the modernist artists like the very early Russian constructivists and also the artists who created abstract art like Malevich, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Paul Klee and Rodchenko.
I also like the geometrical abstraction of Josef Albers, and from the 50s in America Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Rothko. So my major influence was the European Avant-garde from 1900 until the 1930s.
What they did was so radical and so different from anything before that I have always thought there is still space to go back there and rework those themes, updating them to today’s visual standard or to show what would have happened if they had continued to work.
Mondrian died when he did the Boogie Woogie series, the Broadway Boogie Woogie, the Victorian Boogie Woogie; when I look at these works I really like them but I always feel they could be continued, they could be pushed forward visually and even conceptually, and I really enjoy attempting to add something to these works without being presumptuous.
When I see reproductions or paintings in museums or public galleries, I always feel that these works can be continued straight from the point they were left by their artists.
Artworks are never really finished: the art finishes where the life finishes.


What is the importance and function of grid, parallel line and dots?

I can’t give any deeper explanation than this one: I like them very much!
I simply really like the perfect form of the round dot and the perfect form of the horizontal line.
It is a gut feeling: when I see things round and detailed, and horizontal and vertical lines in a grid format, I always like them.
Over the years I have thought a lot about why they have always been so attractive to me and obviously to people.
People are attracted to simple elements: the circle and the square are the simplest elements around and their representation has a very long history in art.
You can see them in all sorts of religious art and imagery, not only in Buddhist Mandalas or Hinduism, but also in Christian artworks there are lots of abstract elements between the figurative works. For example, Malevich was an icon painter before becoming an abstract geometrical painter and when he created his most famous works, the white and black squares, he related these works to the decorative patterns, which were used between fresco images in Medieval Art.
Dot and square are the most simple and strong existing forms and they attracted many people because of their very essential, elemental quality. Even back in cave paintings, some of them from over 14.000 years ago in Europe, there were lots of dots, circles and squares. In Art History they (cave paintings) were always mentioned for the figures, for the animals and hunting scenes, but it seems that no one has really noticed that there are also dots and line drawings. These were considered more like scribbling, but they were there and not accidentally.
Also in Body Painting, dots and lines are recurrent motives. Not only in Australian aboriginal culture, but also among African tribes and Indonesian Body Art.
Dots, lines, squares - they were always there no matter how far back you go into human history, they were always there.
There is something very basic about them and this is why I think people are still very much connected to them and that’s probably why people like my work.

What is the difference between the ruler drawings and the free-hand ones?

First of all I just wanted to see the differences between them. It is completely different to draw by hand than with a ruler and subsequently the result is quite different.
When I started the line drawings in the 90s I tried both methods.
I used the ruler a lot when I was a draftsman as it was one of my everyday tools. The drawings I made were obviously very technical, like architecture or mechanical parts of machines. When I did the first line drawings I decided to experiment the free hand. Then I thought of using the ruler again in an artistic way and see what the result would be.
It was all very experimental in the beginning and now still is, so when I find something interesting I continue down that line, gradually changing.

What is the significance of text in your drawings?

I had the idea of using text when I first saw micro-calligraphy. In particular I saw Islamic artworks and I really like the use of these tiny, minute letters. Since I was studying, I used very small handwriting and I thought they could have also be read visually as drawings. The writing quality is very much related to line drawings so the letters end up being little visual elements.
The text or the meaning of the text is not even considered. It does not matter if it is readable or not, if the language used is understandable or not, because they can be read only visually. I try to use smaller and smaller letters as the text drawings become more complex and visually interesting.


What is the significance of drawing over motifs and prints or printouts?

In cases such as drawing over an image of the Mona Lisa or a Mondrian, I wanted to try how they could have been altered by my drawings. It was like recombining them but again, the experimental aspect of it is what is most important.
Very often artists find out things just by doing them so it is always better to not think too much about it. As soon as you have the idea just do it straight away. It very often happens that you see something interesting that you have not even expected happening and then you can continue working with that longer and then you just try out how to alter the image.
They always become interesting in one way and I always think that if I find them interesting probably other people will do too.
The botanical drawings and the music sheet prints were born as well as experiments.
The first intention is always to see what my drawings would look like if combined with this imagery, it is again mainly a visual reason.

How do the drawings translate to the paintings? Do they inform them directly, some drawings more than others?

The paintings and the drawings feed each other. I have never done preparatory drawings for my paintings as most artists do. When I use paper I always consider it as a work in it’s own right and I continuously work with both materials.
The different qualities of paper and canvas require different processes. Some of the techniques I use for paintings and works on paper are quite similar, but others are radically different.
In painting, when I use the thread for creating the grid, I would not use it in drawing.
But I draw the lines with ink; the ink line on paper is the thread line on canvas.
Since I have started to make art I have always wanted to create something strongly visual which appeals to people at the first glance.
Most of the references to science, religion, philosophy are at first due to their visual qualities. No matter how simple or complex these works are, they mainly represent this.
In the last few years, the works on paper have become more important, before that, I was more concentrated on paintings. But that does not mean I will stop doing paintings.

Are the paintings not rather drawings themselves? Are the process and techniques not essentially drawings techniques?

My paintings have at the same time drawing qualities, which is why I consider most of them as ‘drawing paintings’ as the thread line is not painted.
So when I have works without dots, just colour threads, they are more like drawings on canvas as the only painted part is the background and sometimes not even that like in the raw canvases.
I even won a drawing prize, the Prospect Prize, with one of my large paintings in 2004.

Is the drawing process obsessive?

I guess the answer to this question is ‘yes’. Whether you consider being obsessive positive or negative.
All the works where people use very detailed particles, which fill the paper or the canvas can be considered obsessive.

What is the importance of repetition?

I was always attracted to imagery that involves myriads of particles or myriads of little pieces or lines. Anything, not only artworks: a field with millions of little flowers, grains of sand, microscope pictures of different materials, molecular structure models, screen pixel or electronic computer boards, clouds in the sky, sparkles of the fire.
So I try to recreate in my works these organic forms which you find everywhere in the world, reconfiguring and translating them in coloured harmonies or reducing them to black and white.

Is there a relationship to fabrics and embroidery, also as a traditional craft from Hungary?

I have done works back in the 90s in Australia that reproduce Hungarian patterns related to European Folk Art. I created my own patterns very similar to Folk Art motives and I also used figurative elements in that time, even animals, recognizable images from the real world. They were strongly influenced by my mother’s embroidery: she did embroidery for her whole life and I saw her doing it when I was little. I really like them and they were very beautiful and I also felt how much she enjoyed doing them. I can even say very frankly that I was influenced by how she worked. For me to sit down and paint or draw makes me feel the same kind of enjoyment I used to feel when I was looking at my mother while she was doing these embroideries.

Is there a relationship to Australian folk/aboriginal art as you did your studies and early career there?

People that know Australian aboriginal art, where the dot and line have a very strong importance have asked me whether there was any connection to that.
I think I was influenced by it, but I was already attracted by that kind of visual beforehand.
Since I was little, I have loved little squares and I loved to fill out my square notebook pages, because I have always liked the process of drawing.
So when I saw aboriginal works for the first time, I instantly loved them. It was like a revelation to me because I had never seen them before. In Hungary, I could not even see aboriginal paintings in reproduction. And also in Europe, it was not easy to see them and they are still quite unknown.
During my school years in Melbourne, I recombined this aboriginal type of dots painting with geometrical abstract art (from the time) when abstraction was created by Russian, Dutch and German artists.
That is when my paintings started to be more important and become more interesting for myself. Also my teachers started to appreciate them more when they started to be a combination between European and tribal art.

Your oeuvre seems to express spirituality and has a strong meditative aspect about it, is that intentional? Are there any links to Eastern philosophy or religion?

It was never something I wanted to put into my art intentionally. I never decided that from tomorrow I will be a spiritual painter. It was more something that came out experiencing visuality.
It was always most important to me that the people that look at my painting can see something enjoyable in what it is, in the colours and the different forms, so in this way, my works were quite formal.
But after few years studying art I realised myself that they were also quite spiritual in the way people perceived them. It definitely comes from inside my feelings and also different interests in religion and philosophy.
For many years I looked at my paintings and drawings and I tried to figure out what is most important for myself and why a painting is working. I have been thinking a lot why my paintings attract people and what sort of people like them. It actually took me quite a few years to realize that these paintings must have some kind of spiritual content.
At the beginning I was totally unaware of it but more and more people told me, so I felt it must have naturally come from myself.
I was brought up religious and I rejected it when I was teenager and then it came back again so I can say that I am a religious person. But I am interested in many aspects of religion, especially in the way religion is perceived in the world. I can’t say I am strongly Christian or Buddhist, or any other. I also observe religion philosophically. I do not follow these things just blindly, I rather create and combine my own religion.

Music plays quite an important role in your life and also in your art I assume.
How directly does music appear in the works? Is there a concrete link in some works, does the rhythm translate, or some motifs or themes or is it more an abstract translation, a feeling of the presence of music?

I listen for hours to music every day, not only classical or contemporary classical music but also electronic, pop, jazz, folk. But I have never tried to visually represent a type of music or a specific piece of music in drawings or paintings. I mention this because there are artists that relate their works to music in a literal sense, almost creating narrative type of works. For example they are listening to Stravinskij “The Firebird� and they try to do an abstract work, which relates to the structure or to the feeling of the music.
I am not like this, I get inspired from music in a much more unrelated way.
There were experiments by Paul Klee, Kandinsky and many other early modernists whose subject were music and its visual connection. I try to continue that type of thing.
I mainly try to challenge the static nature of visual art creating works, which stimulate people to watch them over and over, to come back and stare at them for long time, not only seconds or minutes.
Technically there is a very strong relation to repetitive music like the American composer Steve Reich and the minimalist Morton Feldman, but also John Cage, Terry Riley, even Philip Glass. There are lots of composers I could relate my repetitive works to, because listening to that music, especially to its structure, and how it changes gradually is what you can see in some of my works.
Another connection would be electronic music. How something like a basic musical pattern that starts to appear in the beginning and then gradually changes, picks up different instruments, harmonies and melodies, and then remerges through the very rigid structure of the beginning. This is what I sometimes try to simulate in my works especially with layers. Or when I use different types of paper, like tracing paper or rice paper which is very thin and you can see through and what’s underneath. Or in the paintings, when I use the layers of dots over the built-up surface of the clear acrylic medium: all these repetitive particles create a structure that is very much related to repetitive and electronic music.
The little particles, dots and lines my works are made of, create something that optically makes the eye of the viewer shift around. In this way, the viewer discovers different ways to look at it or at different bits of the work. When I use colour, I try to use complex colour harmonies, and when people say that they really like how the work changes over the day and under different lights, I feel that I have achieved something, which goes beyond the static nature of the work, like in music.