Octopus (2010)
The Octopus by Karl Meszlényi and Dezső Merlics is a dramatic creation that achieves its true impact by harmoniously integrating colors, lights, and the music chosen as part of the work.
In the piece, the mysterious lights and futuristic, yet sea-representing colors accompany the approach of the enormous and terrifying octopus, or the awakening from the horror after its departure. Various heaps of objects appearing on the sea floor suggest destruction and devastation. Upon seeing these objects, an initially mysterious force, and later the human hand that also appears in this work, stirs the objects, along with the colors, the seabed silt, and the memories. The mystical human singing voices in the music underscore associations with the surreal world, imagination, and dreams. Instead of concrete objects and symbols, the artist uses a painterly moving, twisting, writhing drapery illuminated with neon-like, sharp, strong lights as the „speaker,” whose role is brilliantly replaced by the human hand, which indirectly (artist/human) and directly (deus/enigma) presents the creators.
The sharpness of the opening image and the elemental expressive power in the puritanism borrowed from the toolkit of minimal art prepare the sequence of scenes.
Paint flow (2010)
The video installation/video artwork associating with birth depicts the development that occurs at every level of the material world. The project presents a visual world to the viewer that reflects the colors and materials of a sterile laboratory. The silvery, shiny surfaces and white, plasma-like material, as well as the blue color of medical surgical gloves, reinforce the viewer’s perception of gaining insight into the intimate environment of a laboratory. After the specific intervention with an injection needle depicted in the work, the cells begin to divide and become complex. The video presents well-distinguishable stages, among which in the 4th part, with the appearance of reds, blues, and purples, the formation of the earth’s crust and a futuristic, Martian landscape are revealed, and with the focus, the processes become alienated.
Similar to hyperrealism, Meszlényi enlarges the image to a macro size to remove the eye from the original sight, thus making the laboratory process part of a larger, cosmic metamorphosis. The illumination of the scenes from below through a glass plate serves the above efforts, making the process stage-like and life alien. The last frames, the black-yellow undulating surfaces and shapes, reflect the formation of the earth’s crust, and in contrast to this hypercontextualization, a naturalistic, recognizable human hand appears, directing and intervening in the forming surface. Thus, the hand here becomes a divine right, „dextra,” and expands the interpretative possibilities of the message towards the creation of the world and various creation myths.
Meszlényi’s video artwork also reflects the artist’s characteristic imagination and painterliness, the latter being strongly felt in the middle of the creation.
Donkey bird (2010)
The work of the three young artists would fit into the category of „experimental film,” but due to the numerous iconographic solutions in the video (double spatial division, etc.), it can be classified as a video installation or video art.
The black-and-white contrasting color scheme evokes the surrealist and detective films of the 1930s and film noirs, while the nighttime landscape with the lake and the reflecting, jagged black tree crowns uses the visual tools of horror films and thrillers from the ’90s.
The lakeshore and the rising and setting moon, beyond conveying the passage of time, serve as an appropriate backdrop for tragic, mysterious, and secretive actions taking place under the cover of night. The powerful entry of the double bass appropriately evokes the poetry of Lajos Vajda among Hungarian art patrons, sharpened by the vibrant and virtuoso drum and bass beats. The human figure in front of the flash/moonlight is presumably erasing traces of a murder. Although there are no clear objects or sharply interpretable actions in this work, it is evident that the video depicts a conflict ending in some tragedy, where the landscape again carries additional meaning, as is present in Meszlényi’s other works.
The three creators place the work in the modern era of the 21st century with the help of accelerated sequences and music in the last third of the video.
